With Pulitzer Sweep, 'LA Times' Is Back on Top

By: Jennifer Saba The Los Angeles Times, tainted not so long ago by the Staples Center fiasco, has good reason to celebrate. On Monday, the Tribune Co.-owned paper swept the Pulitzers winning five awards for breaking news, national reporting, criticism, editorial writing and feature photography. Only The New York Times has won more prizes in one year -- seven, for its Sept. 11 coverage. This year, the Gray Lady only took home one Pulitzer, and only one other paper, The Wall Street Journal, was honored with more than one prize.

With these wins, perhaps the paper can now completely shake off any lingering residue from the scandals that beset it in the late '90s.

"I had no hope of winning five Pulitzers," said L.A. Times Editor John Carroll. "I have to say there was a bit of luck involved. It's a fickle process. Sometimes you get breaks and sometimes you don't. We must have received a lot of breaks to get five -- not that I'm not proud of the work."

For now, it's safe to say, that after years of low morale, the staff at the L.A. Times has turned the corner and the paper is well on its way to becoming more of a national player. "We would like to be a distinctive national voice from the West," Carroll said. "I think we are that but I would like [the paper] to be a greater part of the national part of the conversation."

Carroll acknowledges that he has inherited a strong staff and that he also did a lot of recruiting for high-level editorships. That said, he claims to look for staffers all over the country, not just at The New York Times, which has lost several journalists to its competitor on the West Coast. "I don't like to hire from The New York Times because they tend to be difficult to get and expensive," Carroll said. "We've hired a few from there but not nearly as much as we have lost to them in the '90s. Of course, they hire from us -- it's a dog-eat-dog world."

Almost all of the winners who spoke with E&P credit Carroll and Managing Editor Dean Baquet for reinvigorating the newspaper. "[The win] is really a testimony to John Carroll and Dean Baquet and the ambition of the paper," said Nancy Cleeland, a labor reporter who won the Pulitzer for national reporting along with Abigail Goldman, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall, for their series on Wal-Mart. "It's a story that couldn't have been done anywhere else or very few places."

Cleeland, who has been with the paper for seven years, remembers when the staff was completely demoralized during the Mark Willis era. "There was a lot of hope and optimism with Dean and John who are pushing investigative projects," she said.

Goldman, who has been with the paper for 10 years, says she's unsure if the paper would have green-lighted their Wal-Mart pitch, which came out of beat reporting, at another time and under different editors. "They are pushing us to think big and take risks and to go for things [that] in the past, I'm not sure we would have pursued," she said. "To pitch a project like this and have the editors be excited about it and then devote the time and resources to it is clearly a reflection on our leadership."

Goldman said the article took about 10 to 11 months to complete, including interruptions from the war and the recall election. In addition, the paper sent the reporters to Honduras and Bangladesh.

Sam Enriquez, city editor who oversaw the coverage of the California brush fires which won a Pulitzer for breaking news, said there is a renewed focus on beat reporting which helps in mobilizing the newsroom, especially during a crisis.

Dan Neil, who won the prize for criticism for auto reviews, says he came to the paper seven months ago specifically with the goal of winning a Pulitzer. "The L.A. Times has done some incredible work this year. Overall, people are very gratified that their work has been so well received."