NPPA 47th Flying Short Course
David Leeson
![[Photo of David Leeson]](images/leeson.jpg)
David Leeson has been a staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News since 1984. He has also worked for the Abilene Reporter News (1977-82) and The Times-Picayune/The States-Item in New Orleans (1982-84).
His assignments have included coverage of the FDN “Freedom Fighters” in their war against the former Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Other Central and South American assignments have included: El Salvador presidential elections (1984 and 88), civil unrest in Panama (1988) Peru (1989) and coverage of Colombia’s drug wars (1989).
In 1985 Leeson was a finalist for the Pulitzer for his photo coverage of apartheid in South Africa. He made two more trips to South Africa in the following years culminating with South Africa’s first non-racial presidential election in 1994.
In 1986 he lived on the streets of Dallas with the homeless for two months. The photos, published in a 24-page special section by The Dallas Morning News, won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Problems of the Disadvantaged.
In 1991, Leeson arrived in Kuwait City with the 1st Marine Division and was among the first journalists to photograph in the city following Iraq’s withdrawal during the Gulf War. The following year he returned to the gulf and gave readers an exclusive look inside war-torn Baghdad.
In 1994, he covered civil war in Angola, earning him a second Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. In the same year, a photograph Leeson made of a family evacuating floodwaters in southeast Texas was named a finalist for the Pulitzer.
For more than 14-months, 1996 thru 1997, he worked on an essay about death row in the United States. Following that assignment, Leeson completed stories in China, Bosnia, the 1999 earthquake in Turkey and civil war in Sudan.
In the fall of 2000, Leeson began shooting video for The Dallas Morning News making him one of the first staff photographers in the nation shooting video for a newspaper on a full-time basis. Since then he has completed more than 70 short features and seven documentaries.
In 2003, Leeson was an embedded journalist in the U. S. lead Iraq invasion. He traveled with the Third Infantry Division, Third Brigade Combat Team, Task Force 2-69 Armored (Fort Benning, GA) and was at the frontline, under fire from enemy troops for 21-days, the length of the war.
In 2004 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography along with colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyer for their 2003 work in Iraq. Two of his documentaries from the war have won honors. “War Stories” (2003) won a National Headliners award for Best Television Documentary and a national Edward R. Murrow Award. “Dust to Dust” (2004) was named a finalist for best short film at the USA Film Festival.
Leeson has three children and is married to Kim Ritzenthaler who is also a staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News.