The announcement this week of the 2010 Pulitzer prizes is a good time to look at a wonderful book called “Pulitzer’s Gold,” written by veteran journalist, Roy J. Harris, Jr. The 2007 book, now in paperback, tells the exciting behind the scenes stories of the Pulitzers given for public service journalism. The book makes you proud to be in the field.
The stories range from recognition of the New York Times’ publication of European documents when the U.S. was at war in Europe (1919) to the investigation by the Lufkin (Texas) News of a beating death of a local son while in Marine Corps training (1977), and on through coverage of Hurricane Katrina (2006, to both the Biloxi-Gulfport Mississippi Sun Herald and New Orleans times-Picayune).
The stories bring to life how the editors and reporters fought for their work (and often argued among themselves), how they smelled a good story and never let go, how the Pulitzer committees evolved the meaning of the award over time.
Watergate is here (Washington Post, 1973); as is the exposure of Charles Ponzi by the Boston Post (1921); as is the 1979 investigation by the tiny Point Reyes (California) Light into the Synanon cult (you remember, the group that put the live rattle snake into the mailbox of a lawyer it didn’t like).Pulitzer’s Gold is a textbook for high school and college classes, but also a good introduction to how journalists operate, and why the First Amendment was intended to protect the public, by letting the press do its work.
This year’s Public Service award fits the pattern of the previous winners perfectly. The Pulitzer judges wrote:“Awarded to the Bristol (VA) Herald Courier for the work of Daniel Gilbert in illuminating the murky mismanagement of natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of land owners in southwest Virginia, spurring remedial action by state lawmakers.”
You can’t do better than that.
--Bob Meyers
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