Ron Kirksey, a Clinton, Tennessee, native and a 1970 UT graduate in political science, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 as part of a team of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal in public journalism. The beating of Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots that followed led to the Beacon Journal’s in-depth probe of racial attitudes in the city, and Kirksey was lead writer.
He began his journalism career with the US Army during the Vietnam War. After the war, he worked for the Paris (Tennessee) Post-Intelligencer until the mid-1970s and then moved to the Kingsport Times-News, where he served as a news editor, editorial page editor, and columnist from 1975 to 1982. He then went to Akron, where he served as chief editorial writer and columnist, as metro editor in charge of political coverage, and as a business editor.