Richard Kotuk

Richard Kotuk
Kotuk on Main Beach, East Hampton (village), New York in the winter of 1996
Born	(1943-11-23)23 November 1943 New York City
Died	February 10, 1998(1998-02-10) (aged 54)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	New York University The New School
Occupation	Journalist, producer, documentary filmmaker
Years active	1965–1998

Richard Kotuk (November 23, 1943 – February 10, 1998) was an award winning American journalist, producer and documentary filmmaker. He directed and produced Travis, a 1998 documentary film for which he won a George Foster Peabody Award. He was also the producer of the well known WNET news programs Bill Moyers Journal and The 51st State. His works are notable for their connection to the downtrodden especially in and around New York areas.

Richard Kotuk grew up in New York City. He attended New York University and graduated in 1964 with a B.A. in English and minors in Journalism and Spanish. While a student at New York University, he won the New York University Fiction Writing Award. In 1965, he completed The Writer’s Workshop graduate program at The State University of Iowa. In 1978, he graduated with an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School for Social Research.

Kotuk began his career in advertising. From 1965 to 1968, he worked as a Print and Television Copywriter and Producer for Grey Advertising, Ted Bates (advertising firm) and Ogilvy & Mather. His photography was featured in the Street Kids exhibit at New-York Historical Society.

For the next three years, he focused on his writing career. He became a feature writer for The Village Voice. Alongside, he worked as a documentary films writer for the National Educational Television’s The Great American Dream Machine. He also wrote for the TV Anti-Drug Abuse Campaign for Ad Council and the Federal Government. In addition, he wrote and produced television and radio pieces for the Odyssey House, a treatment facility for drug addicts. He also had a short story titled Steve published as a part of the 1972 Bobbs-Merrill Company anthology, Survival Prose.

In 1973, he became a writer and director for television projects at the Children's Aid Society. From June to September 1973, he produced, wrote and directed an environmental-ecology series for the United Nations film departments titled Man Builds/ Man Destroys.