In the world of journalism, to win a Pulitzer Prize inspires both admiration and envy. To win Supreme Court cases earns universal praise. In more than four decades under Tim Hays, the Riverside Press-Enterprise enjoyed all that. The paper won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with a series on the local government's corrupt handling of the Agua Caliente Native American tribe, and it triumphed in two 1980s Supreme Court cases that opened jury selection and pretrial hearings to the public.
Retired publisher Howard W. "Tim" Hays, '39, died October 14 after a struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 94.
Hays earned a law degree from Harvard University and worked as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation during World War II. He joined his father's newspaper as an assistant editor in 1946 and took the reins in 1949. During the next five decades, he oversaw dramatic expansions in the paper's scope and circulation.
He focused relentlessly on public service, most notably in the Agua Caliente series. In more than 100 articles and editorials, the Press-Enterprise revealed that the local judiciary was extorting money from the tribe through a conservatorship program. At one point, one of the implicated judges threatened to jail Hays.
In 1997, some 69 years after his father first bought stock in the Riverside Press, Hays and his family sold their shares of the newspaper to an outside company. Hays is survived by his wife, Susie Gudermuth Hays; sons Bill and Tom; and a brother, Dan.
Scott Bland, ’10, is a reporter at National Journal.
