Los Angeles Times Wins Five Pulitzers
NEW YORK – The Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzer Prizes, the second most by a newspaper in one year, and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, won its first Pulitzer – for an investigative report on civilian killings by an elite U.S. Army unit in Vietnam 37 years ago.
The Times was honored for breaking news reporting on the wildfires that ravaged southern California last year and for feature photography, criticism and editorial writing. It also won in the national reporting category for its examination of the tactics that have made Wal-Mart the world’s largest company.
Two books each on the Soviet Union and slavery – one written by a one-time proofreader turned novelist – dominated awards in the arts. The poetry prize went to the son of a poet who won the Pulitzer 32 years earlier.
The New York Times, which won a record seven Pulitzer Prizes in 2002, primarily for its coverage of the 2001 terror attacks, earned one prize this year, for public service, in an unusual cross-media collaboration with the PBS program “Frontline” and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on lax enforcement of work safety rules at McWane Inc., a cast-iron pipe foundry.
As news of the awards reached the Los Angeles Times’ newsroom, staff members broke into cheers and applause.
“My feeling is this reflects the depth of talent at this paper and the depth of dedication across all departments,” Times editor John S. Carroll told the staff.
The investigative reporting prize honored Toledo Blade reporters Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr for their articles about an elite Army platoon accused of killing unarmed Vietnamese civilians in 1967. The series prompted the military to begin interviewing ex-members of the unit and trying to determine why an earlier official probe – never before made public – ended in 1975 with no charges.
“We won!” Blade executive editor Ron Royhab yelled to a crowded newsroom after getting the news in a cell phone call. Sallah and Weiss hugged each other and the paper’s top editors and publisher.
Weiss reminded the jubilant newsroom not to “forget the people we wrote about. The people in the villages who were killed. The soldiers who are still suffering post-traumatic stress.”
The Wall Street Journal won two Pulitzers – one for explanatory reporting, by Kevin Helliker and Thomas M. Burton on a “groundbreaking” examination of aneurysms, and the other for beat reporting for Daniel Golden’s “compelling and meticulously documented” stories on admission preferences to the children of alumni and donors at U.S. universities.
The international reporting prize went to Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post for what the Pulitzer board called his “extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril” the voices and emotions of Iraqis seeing their country invaded and their way of life upended.
Other journalism Pulitzer winners were:
– Leonard Pitts Jr., of The Miami Herald, for commentary; “fresh, vibrant columns that spoke, with both passion and compassion, to ordinary people on often divisive issues,” the Pulitzer board said.
– Dan Neil, of the Los Angeles Times, for criticism; his “one-of-a-kind” reviews of automobiles, blending technical expertise with “offbeat humor and astute cultural observations.”
– William Stall, of the Los Angeles Times, for “incisive editorials that analyzed California’s troubled state government, prescribed remedies and served as a model for addressing complex state issues.”
– Matt Davies of The Journal News, in White Plains, for editorial cartooning; the board cited his “piercing cartoons on an array of topics, drawn with a fresh, original style.”
– David Leeson and Cheryl Diaz Meyer, of The Dallas Morning News, for “eloquent” breaking news photographs depicting the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq.
– Carolyn Cole, of the Los Angeles Times, for feature photography; the board praised her behind-the-scenes look at the effects of civil war in Liberia, with special attention to innocent citizens caught in the conflict.
The board made no award in feature writing for the first time since the category was added in 1979. The last time there was no award in a category was in 1993, for editorial writing.
In the arts, “The Known World,” Edward P. Jones’ historical novel about a black slave owner, won the prize for fiction. The winner for history was Steven Hahn for “A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration.”
William Taubman, a political science professor at Amherst College who has written extensively on the Soviet era, won the biography award for “Khrushchev: The Man and His Era.” The prize for general nonfiction went to “Gulag: A History,” by Anne Applebaum, a veteran foreign correspondent who writes an op-ed column for The Washington Post.
Reached at home in Arlington, Va., Jones, 53, called the award welcome news on a dreary day.
“I’ve been feeling sick, and I’m in the middle of having to move, because the upstairs neighbors are so noisy,” said Jones, who began writing while working as a proofreader at Tax Notes, a Washington, D.C., trade publication, and has taught fiction writing at Princeton and other schools.
Hahn, 52, is a history scholar specializing in 19th-century America, the South, slavery and emancipation and teaches history at the University of Pennsylvania.
Taubman has written five previous books on the Soviet Union, sharing authorship on two of them with Sergei Khrushshev, son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Applebaum has worked abroad for various publications including London’s Spectator and the Economist and is a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board in addition to being writer of a column.
Other winners in the arts:
– Playwright Doug Wright for his drama, “I Am My Own Wife,” the tale of a German transvestite who survived the Nazis and the Communists.
– Poet Franz Wright for “Walking to Martha’s Vineyard”; Wright’s late father, poet James Wright, won a Pulitzer in 1972 for “Collected Poems.”
“I guess I’ll go take a walk or something,” Wright said when reached in Fayetteville, Ark., where he is teaching at the University of Arkansas. “I wish my father could share this moment with me.”
– Paul Moravec, head of the music department at Long Island’s Adelphi University, for “Tempest Fantasy,” a chamber music piece. Moravec called the 27-minute composition a “musical meditation on aspects of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest.’”
Each prize is worth $10,000, except for public service, which is recognized with a gold medal. The awards are given by Columbia University on the recommendation of the 18-member Pulitzer board, which considers nominations from jurors in each category.
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On the Net: http://www.pulitzer.org