Orlando Sentinel Pulitzer winner, UCF program director
John Bersia, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for a series of Orlando Sentinel editorials on predatory loan practices who was later Global Perspectives program director at the University of Central Florida, died Thursday at the age of 62.
Bersia, of Winter Springs, died of metastatic cancer at hospice care facility in Altamonte Springs.
Despite no prior journalism experience, Bersia was hired to write editorials on foreign affairs in 1985, said Jane Healy, then the editorial page editor.
Healy said she was impressed by Bersia’s credentials, which included master’s degrees in international relations from the London School of Economics and government from Georgetown University.
“He knew so much about foreign affairs,” she said. “He had a real depth of knowledge. He would always propose these positions in editorial meetings [that were] very reasoned.”
By the late 1990s, Bersia also was writing business editorials. Payday loan companies were “springing up all over,” said Manning Pynn, the editorial page editor at the time.
“Because John Bersia was so studious and dedicated to his craft I thought he’d be a good one to pursue this,” he said. “I was right. He pursued it in a dogged way. He found people who were affected by it and told their stories.”
In the series, called “Fleeced in Florida,” Bersia found a Sanford woman who was charged interest and fees totaling 264 percent per year on a $250 loan.
He wrote that the “shameful truth” was the poor were often the
“He was passionate about a lot of global issues. That was close to his heart.”
Jes Squires, assistant director of the Office of Global Perspectives
most affected by the predatory practices.
“They are devouring the meager assets of hundreds of thousands of Floridians who live payday to payday — the very people who can least afford to be exploited,” he wrote in a March 1999 editorial titled “Legal loan sharking.” “No knee-caps get broken, but — in a manner of speaking — lots of backs do. The charges are more than the poor can bear.”
The series spurred the Florida state legislature to rein in the loan companies. The Pulitzer Prize committee called the series “a passionate editorial campaign attacking predatory lending practices in the state, which prompted changes in local lending regulations.”
Winning the Pulitzer was rewarding, but not the main objective, said Manning.
“The objective was to expose something that was deplorable and certainly not in the public’s interest,” Manning said.
Bersia left the Sentinel in 2001 for a position at UCF, where he eventually became special assistant to the president for Global Perspectives. He also had TV show on WUCF called “Global Perspectives.”
The program teaches topics such as human-trafficking awareness and diplomacy.
He also was a professor on global issues and touched many students’ lives, said Jes Squires, who was in one of his classes in 2006 and is now assistant director of the Office of Global Perspectives.
“I would not have learned Mandarin if it were not for him,” she said. “I would not have a passport if it were not for him. I would not have completed my graduate work if it were not for him.”
One of his proudest accomplishments was helping to establish the Center for the Study of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. Its goal is to better learn about and offer solutions for the world-wide human trafficking issue.
“He was passionate about a lot of global issues,” Squires said. “That was close to his heart.”
Bersia grew up in Winter Park and received a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from UCF in 1977.
He leaves behind his wife, Renee Johnson, and a stepdaughter. Johnson said Bersia enjoyed traveling and learning about other cultures.
“He was a wonderful person,” Johnson said. “He really loved people. He was always concerned with fairness and how people were treated.”
Funeral arrangements are pending.