Quake Coverage Wins Pulitzer Tiny Virgin Islands Paper Receives Gold Medal; Composer Gould, Dramatist Foote Also Selected
The Los Angeles Times won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news Tuesday for its coverage of the chaos and devastation of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which killed 61 people and caused more than $11 billion in damage in California.
The Virgin Islands Daily News of St. Thomas won the gold medal for public service, the single most prestigious journalistic Pulitzer of the 14 announced Tuesday, for its reporting on the links between corruption and ineptitude in the local criminal justice system and a high rate of violent crime in the islands.
The Virgin Islands paper, with a circulation of 16,400 and a staff of 21, including part-timers, is one of the smallest ever to win a Pulitzer.
Three newspapers - the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Newsday - were awarded two Pulitzers each, as was The Associated Press.
Two elder statesmen in the arts also won Pulitzers.
Composer Morton Gould, 81, won the award in music for his orchestral composition, “String Music.”
Horton Foote, 79, won the Pulitzer Prize in drama for his production, “Young Man From Atlanta.”
In the other arts categories, the Pulitzer winners were:
FICTION: Carol Shields for “The Stone Diaries.”
BIOGRAPHY: Joan D. Hedrick for “Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life.”
HISTORY: Doris Kearns Goodwin for “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.”
GENERAL NON-FICTION: Jonathan Weiner for “The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time.”
POETRY: Philip Levine for “The Simple Truth.”
The winner in beat reporting was David Shribman, assistant managing editor and columnist for the Boston Globe. The winner in feature reporting was Ron Suskind of the Wall Street Journal.
Reporter Leon Dash and photographer Lucian Perkins of the Washington Post won a Pulitzer in explanatory journalism for their profile of three generations of a family’s struggle with poverty and drugs.
Tony Horwitz of the Wall Street Journal won the national reporting prize for his stories about working conditions in low-wage America.
Two Pulitzers were awarded for excellence in covering the horrors of ethnic violence in Rwanda. Both went to The Associated Press. Mark Fritz won in international reporting; four AP photographers Jacqueline Arzt, Javier Bauluz, Jean-Marc Bouju and Karsten Thielker - won the award in feature photography.
Newsday, owned by Times Mirror, won Pulitzers in commentary (Jim Dwyer) and investigative reporting (Brian Donovan and Stephanie Saul).
Other Pulitzer winners were:
Margo Jefferson, New York Times, criticism.
Jeffrey Good, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, editorial writing.
Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Constitution, editorial cartooning.
Carol Guzy, Washington Post, spot news photography.