Before they contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, Michael Biesecker and Andrew Carter were chasing stories across NC State’s campus as student journalists for the Technician. Today, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS) alumni are part of reporting teams recognized for bringing complex stories to life through journalism that seeks truth, deepens understanding and captures the human experiences behind today’s complex challenges.

Biesecker, a 1996 English graduate and a global investigative reporter for the Associated Press (AP), and Carter, a 2003 communication graduate and senior reporter at the Chicago Tribune, have built distinguished careers rooted in curiosity, critical thinking and compelling storytelling. Their work earned recognition in two Pulitzer Prize categories this year, underscoring how CHASS graduates use the skills they developed at NC State to help the public better understand how major societal issues impact people’s daily lives.

Biesecker contributed to the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning international reporting project, Made in America, Watched Worldwide; it included Biesecker’s investigation into how American technology companies supplied artificial intelligence models and cloud computing services used by the Israeli military for surveillance and targeting operations in Gaza and Lebanon. And as part of the Chicago Tribune team honored for its local coverage of federal immigration enforcement operations in Chicago, Carter captured anxious families and communities responding in real time to the ICE raids unfolding across the city.

Though their reporting focused on different subjects and took shape in various parts of the world, both journalists trace their roots to NC State. Their experiences in CHASS and at the Technician helped shape careers defined by rigorous reporting and a commitment to telling stories that matter.

Michael Biesecker: Investigating Stories That Matter

Though Biesecker worked on his high school newspaper and cut his journalism teeth at the Technician, he never originally envisioned himself becoming a reporter. Instead, he considered a career as an architect or engineer.

“Then math happened,” he quipped, adding that he fared better in humanities classes and ultimately pivoted to writing and editing courses. He also got involved with the Technician, where he served as a reporter, columnist, opinion editor and cartoonist.

Mentors, including Bob Kochersberger and Micaela Massimino, helped shape his development as a journalist. “The value of my English degree really was in the writing, the researching, having a deeper understanding of the human condition, and organizing ideas into something digestible that people want to read,” he said.

Before joining AP in 2011, Biesecker worked as a columnist for the Winston-Salem Journal and then went on to cover state government for The Charlotte Observer and for the News & Observer. He has been a Pulitzer finalist twice before and was part of an AP team that won the prize for Public Service in 2023 for reporting on war crimes in Ukraine by Russian troops. He has been nominated for four Emmys and has won other major journalism honors, including an Overseas Press Club Award.

While at the News & Observer, he also delved into investigative reporting, working alongside seasoned reporters on stories. They included a 2008 project on North Carolina’s mental health system that uncovered 82 preventable deaths in state institutions resulting from medical accidents, errors, physical force, or homicides.

Since then, Biesecker has focused on two types of reporting: quick-turn investigations that dig deeper into breaking news and long-term investigative projects, like his contribution to the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning series

“The humanity of it all is part of the lens we’re looking through.”  

Working on that piece intermittently for about a year, Biesecker helped chronicle how U.S. technology companies, primarily Microsoft and OpenAI, provided artificial intelligence models and cloud-computing resources to the Israeli military, enabling mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon.

“The topics that I write about have an emotional impact that I have to sort of metabolize and work my way through,” Biesecker said. “Writing about Gaza is obviously a difficult subject.”

Still, he believes journalists cannot turn away from difficult stories. After 30 years in the profession, accountability-driven reporting remains what motivates him most.

In the Pulitzer story, Biesecker applied skills honed throughout his career, such as open-source investigation, public records research, satellite imagery interpretation, and probing government expenditures and organizational ties. His responsibility was to assess the credibility of online information while collaborating with colleagues whose expertise complemented his. Collectively, they pinpointed the companies supporting the Israeli military and examined the effects on people’s lives.

“The humanity of it all is part of the lens we’re looking through,” he said. “We certainly tried to show that the human toll was on the ground in Gaza through both images and through telling the story of the family that was hit by the airstrike in southern Lebanon.”

The reporting required the team to navigate highly complex technologies that few people outside the companies involved fully understand. Biesecker said one of his proudest accomplishments was helping overcome those challenges and providing readers with a rare window into largely secret activities.

Biesecker credits NC State with helping him develop many of the foundational skills that have served him throughout his career. He also points to an internship at the Lexington Dispatch the summer before his senior year as an important learning experience.

“I am a true believer that you learn to write by writing and reading,” Biesecker said. “And you learn to report by reporting.”

In addition to reporting, Biesecker has served as an NC State Student Media board member and as an adjunct professor at NC State and Georgetown.

Biesecker is candid with aspiring journalists about the realities of the profession, explaining that breaking into the field requires resilience, persistence and a willingness to face rejection. He encourages students to gain experience through internships, freelancing, student publications, podcasts, or video projects.

Driven by a commitment to accountability, Biesecker believes journalism matters most when it connects people to stories that reveal the human experiences behind complex systems and brings those stories into public view.

Andrew Carter: Finding Stories Behind the Headlines

While Carter’s reporting now commands a national stage, his love of journalism and sportswriting began as a youngster growing up in Raleigh during the heyday of ACC basketball.

“I read a lot, loved reading the newspaper, particularly the sports section, and was always a good writer,” he said. “My English teachers loved me and always encouraged me to write.”

But he said it was at NC State where journalism became a true career path.

Before joining the Tribune in March 2025, Carter worked at the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel and spent 13 years at The News & Observer, where he earned three National Headliner Awards and was twice named the state’s sportswriter of the year.

Carter credited English professor Rod Cockshutt and editors at the Technician with nurturing his writing and teaching him what a news story should look like. He joked that he spent so much time at the student newspaper — first as a sports columnist and later as an assistant sports editor — that he majored in working at the Technician.

Through CHASS coursework, including a minor in journalism, and student reporting, he developed writing, critical thinking, active listening and communication skills that would become the foundation he relied on throughout his career.

“I think you can’t help but feel for people that you’re writing about and covering. I mean, it’s just a human thing.”

“Being in a really creative environment with classmates, having an opportunity to experiment, get creative, and take chances was beneficial,” he said. “Like in baseball, if you want to become a better hitter, you need at-bats. I wanted to go into journalism, so I needed opportunities to write, and at the Technician I did.”

Covering NC State athletics also helped Carter build professional connections, including with alumnus and longtime journalist Chip Alexander, whom he described as a mentor. But beyond scores and highlights, Carter said he was always drawn to stories that revealed something deeper about people, which became the blueprint for his own reporting.

Among the pieces Carter authored for the Chicago Tribune Pulitzer series was a vivid account of a raid on an apartment building in the city’s South Shore neighborhood, where residents were rounded up, zip-tied and transported to an ICE detention facility.

“Agents were rappelling from helicopters and breaking down doors. Residents were terrified,” Carter recalled.

Another story focused on clergy members who gathered weekly to pray for detainees. And there’s a powerful piece about the Chicago resistance movement, capturing how one of the country’s most diverse and segregated cities united in outrage to fight against injustice.

Carter also wrote the series’ centerpiece, “64 Days in Chicago: The Story of Operation Midway Blitz,” which tied together the reporting team’s work into a comprehensive narrative documenting the immigration enforcement operation.

The goal, he said, was to create a definitive story with lasting historical value, a record readers could turn to decades from now to understand what truly happened during the months ICE agents flooded Chicago.

Reflecting on the Pulitzer-winning project, Carter said each reporter brought a different strength to the team. For Carter, it was his writing, his ability to connect with people, build trust and empathize with those experiencing difficult situations.

“I think you can’t help but feel for people that you’re writing about and covering,” he said. “I mean, it’s just a human thing.”

Of winning journalism’s highest award, Carter said: “It is an honor, of course, to be recognized this way. But what was behind that recognition was months of really difficult things happening.”

For students considering journalism careers, Carter acknowledged that the professional path he followed — beginning at smaller newspapers before moving to larger publications — may not be replicable today. Still, he encouraged aspiring journalists to broaden their skills through photography, podcasting and social media while taking advantage of opportunities available at NC State, from the Technician to WKNC, the student-run radio station.

Above all, Carter said students should pursue work they are genuinely passionate about. While journalism continues to evolve, he believes there will always be a place for thoughtful reporting and storytelling that not only informs people but also captures the complexity, resilience and shared experiences that connect people.

For Carter, that kind of storytelling continues to drive him forward, challenging him to keep listening, keep learning and keep telling stories that matter.