Pulitzers 2008: Online Angles Aid Award Winners

By: E&P Staff What a difference a year makes. In 2007, the 14 journalism Pulitzer Prizes were won by 13 different news outlets ? none of them The Washington Post. This year, the Post took nearly half, garnering six of the coveted awards with wins in everything from criticism to breaking news, as well as the highly desired Public Service Award for its Walter Reed Army Hospital expos?.

"A lot of things came together, I think, in the last year," says Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "a lot of it responding to the challenges in our community and in the world."

The landslide win also boosted Downie's Pulitzer success to 25 newsroom winners since he took the helm in 1991 after Ben Bradlee's departure. Now he has overseen more than half of the paper's 46 Pulitzer Prizes. Some have argued this might even be an all-time record for any single editor.

"It is not the count, so much," Downie says. "It is just satisfying to do the journalism we have done." Bradlee, who was editor from 1965 to 1991, oversaw 15 newsroom-related Pulitzers. The paper's first win was in 1936.

The Post's six-prize sweep is second only to The New York Times, which won seven Pulitzers in 2002 ? many for its Sept. 11 coverage. The Times took two prizes this year, for explanatory and investigative reporting, sharing the latter with the Chicago Tribune.

This year's largest crop of entries, 145, came in Local Reporting, won by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for its stories on the skirting of tax laws to pad county employees' pensions.

The board found no clear winner in the Editorial Writing category, and no prize was awarded ? the first time that has happened since 1993.

Pulitzer Administrator Sig Gissler says several board members remarked to him that the entries showed newspapers and wire services were still producing great work, despite the tough economic times and industry downsizing. "In many ways, this is the golden age," he says. "The jurors who came here were inspired by the work they saw. Amid all of the gloomy talk about newspapers, they left this building inspired. Many said they felt rededicated to journalism."

Gissler notes that this year's journalism submissions, at 1,167, were down slightly from last year's 1,225. He also states that between 15% and 20% of entries included some kind of online component, something he believes will continue to grow. "Papers are getting better at integrating online elements," he adds.

The Pulitzers began to accept online entries in all categories last year except photography, which again requires still images, but no video.

Gissler says that 44% of the Public Service entries had an online component (the most of any category), while 25% of the investigative and explanatory entries did. Asked if the awards would ever create a Web-only category, Gissler says: "We have no plans, but we are carefully monitoring it. The question is, to what extent do you depart from the intention of the Pulitzer Prize?"

In an odd twist, after Gissler had successfully cracked down on judges leaking the names of finalists, both Downie and Keller told E&P they learned about all of their Pulitzer wins soon after the Pulitzer board decided ? the Friday before the Monday announcements.

Local Reporting: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
This year's honor was a first for both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reporter David Umhoefer. Even sweeter for the writer and his colleagues, the prize was earned in the Local Reporting category.

"We do local news as our bread and butter," says Umhoefer, 47, one of 10 staffers who make up the Journal Sentinel's "watchdog team" exclusively dedicated to investigative projects. He won the prize for his investigation of county officials rigging the pension system with buybacks that benefited county workers. Days before the story was published, county officials turned themselves in to the IRS.

The investigation required a lot of number-crunching, so the paper consulted with several experts to vet the calculations and their meaning, says Umhoefer, whose specialty on the watchdog team is local government.

"There is a lot of pride here," he says, addressing the fact that his paper was one of the smaller ones awarded the prize. "A lot of times, papers in the Midwest are overlooked for what we can do. I think that the paper as a whole should be congratulated for encouraging this."

Explanatory Reporting: The New York Times
This is New York Times reporter Amy Harmon's second Pulitzer win. She also was part of the team that took the 2001 National Reporting prize for a series exploring racial experiences and attitudes across America. This year, she won for lending a human face to the ethical issues of DNA testing.

Harmon first hit upon the idea three years ago, when she was pregnant with her daughter and underwent DNA tests herself. She pitched the series about how genetics are giving us a new way to understand ourselves. Her stories covered a great deal of ground, exploring such angles as how insurance companies might use genetics to determine coverage, to employing DNA to breed dogs.

"I'm the kind of person who wants to know things," says Harmon. But she adds that there's some information that she'd rather not know about DNA: "It's scary. It's very potent, and it's going to take us a while to digest it and know what to do with it." Harmon is part of a group of Times reporters who focus on material labeled "How we Live."

Commentary: The Washinton Post
At a time when increasing numbers of daily newspapers are shrinking or eliminating their business sections, Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post says he hopes his Pulitzer Prize for commentary ? the first ever awarded to a column devoted strictly to business ? will help bring some respect back to those who write about this subject.

"There's a special thrill that this would go to a columnist focusing on the economy and business," he tells E&P. "Perhaps this will give more recognition to those who write about finance and investing." He says the rationalizations newspapers offer for cutting back the business newshole, or concentrating only on local business, are nonsensical: "I frankly don't understand it. There is no indication that people are less interested in finance and investing than they used to be. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite."

Many of the columns submitted for the Pulitzer forecast the current credit crisis, something Pearlstein has been warning readers about as far back as 2006. But he is somewhat more optimistic about the long-term prospects of another troubled industry: newspapers.

"Providers of news will do well because there's a demand for news," he says, adding that in the long term there will probably be fewer newspapers, "and the business model will be different. I suspect people will pay for content more now than they have. News is not that cheap to produce, and somebody will have to pay for it ? readers of quality news."

Pearlstein, who has been a television news reporter and congressional staffer, began his newspaper career with reporting jobs in New Hampshire at the Concord Monitor and Foster's Daily Democrat. He also launched a monthly magazine of liberal opinion, The Boston Observer, which, Pearlstein says with a laugh, might undercut some of his criticism of newspaper management: "The only publication I started went out of business, so I guess I have no standing to criticize."

Editorial Cartooning: Investor's Business Daily
Last year, "animation" was the buzzword in the Editorial Cartooning category. This year, winner Michael Ramirez hopes "substantive" becomes the new one.

"My approach is to have a powerful image along with a significant statement," says the Investor's Business Daily (IBD) cartoonist, who won his first Pulitzer in 1994 at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. "It's great to be funny, too, but the most important element is the message ? to have an impact and make people think."

Last year, all three cartoon finalists did animation in addition to print work, and observers wondered if this was the shape of Pulitzer things to come. But Ramirez doesn't do animation ? yet.

The 46-year-old cartoonist joined IBD in early 2006, soon after being pushed out by the Los Angeles Times. When asked if this Pulitzer was especially satisfying after that experience, Ramirez takes the high road: "I'm sad I wasn't able to win a Pulitzer for the Times." But he adds that "it's fantastic to bring one home for IBD."

Ramirez's often-conservative work is distributed by Copley News Service. The syndicate's vice president/editor, Glenda Winders, says the cartoonist is a "master of integrating art and idea."

Feature Writing: The Washington Post
Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-winning story described the blas? reaction of rush-hour commuters to famous violinist Joshua Bell playing in a D.C. metro station. But there was maximum response to the story when it was published in The Washington Post Magazine and online in April 2007. "I stopped counting after I received 2,500 e-mails," the writer recalls.

Weingarten says "99% of the reaction was positive," while noting that a few critics felt the piece was a "flawed stunt." For instance, there were questions about why Bell couldn't have performed during non-rush hour to less-harried onlookers.

But Weingarten says the issue wasn't that the commuters mostly ignoring Bell's beautiful music lacked sophistication, but rather, one of priorities: "Should we be living at such a hectic pace that we can't appreciate something that's beautiful and happens once in a lifetime?"

One reason why the story got such a strong ? and global ? response was that it was accompanied by audio and video on WashingtonPost.com.

Weingarten also writes the "Below the Beltway" humor column syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, whose editorial director, Alan Shearer, says of Weingarten's writing: "Gene hooks them early ? and keeps them hooked until the very end."
-- Profiles by Dave Astor, Jennifer Saba and Mark Fitzgerald