Las Vegas Sun

By: When the Las Vegas Sun ceased publishing as a separate newspaper in 2005 and became a section tucked inside copies of its joint-operating-agreement partner, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, many industry commentators ? including a tut-tutting E&P editorial ? concluded the Sun was finished as a voice in Sin City.

Instead, it was truly at last finding its voice. The Sun's staff of 48 fills its eight-page, usually ad-free daily section with enterprise reporting and the sort of explanatory and investigative journalism imperiled at bigger papers trying with shrunken newsrooms to do everything they once did. Sun reporter Alexandra Berzon won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service following up on breaking stories of construction deaths the R-J dutifully filed, and forgot.

"I think the future of print journalism is very likely what we're doing now, or some form very near it," says Managing Editor Michael J. Kelley.