Varied paths end at journalism’s top prize

By Will Corbin

Here’s the premise: Every great journalistic effort requires critical decisions at critical junctures. We asked editors to tell us about key decisions in the life of the fine journalism that contended for the 2000 Pulitzer Prizes. Those who responded represent winners, finalists and strong contenders for those prizes.

This is the second of a three-part series. This material was assembled largely through e-mail, so what you’ll read here are the relatively unfiltered words of the editors.

Thanks go to the Pulitzer jury chairs who offered up the strong also-rans in this year’s competition — and a special thanks to the editors who responded to our inquiry.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was a finalist in Public Service with an entry by Mark Fazlollah, Craig R. McCoy, Michael Matza and Clea Benson, on how the Philadelphia Police Department’s sex-crimes unit deliberately misclassified sexual assault complaints to make its statistics look good. The series also showed how the police investigated those complaints minimally or not at all. In response, the police unburied some 2,000 rape cases, leading to four dozen arrests in cases that had been closed. Marc Duvoisin, projects editor, writes:

The rape package consisted of two series published in late 1999 — a two-parter called “Crimes Uncounted” and a three-parter, “The Rape Squad Files” — plus numerous follow-ups that continue. The project was also a co-winner of the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting.

Three of the four reporters — McCoy, Fazlollah and Matza — were Pulitzer Public Service finalists in 1998, for a project on the falsification of crime statistics in general by Philadelphia police. “How does it feel to be Pulitzer finalists two years in a row, in the same category, and come away empty-handed?” muses Duvoisin. “Pretty awful, for a day or so.”

We decided early on that we would illustrate the story with real human beings — actual women whose complaints of rape had been blown off or buried by the sex-crimes unit. We would not try to tell the story solely through data. This might seem a no-brainer, but at the time it wasn’t so clear-cut. We were not sure we would be able to get names of victims, or that they would talk to us.

We decided that we wanted the women on the record, talking by name and, if at all possible, with their pictures in the paper. We decided that the credibility and authority of the story depended on breaching the usual anonymity surrounding sexual assault victims. We did this, of course, only with the victim’s explicit permission — and with the understanding that she could revoke that permission at any time. With a very few exceptions, the women whose cases we described talked by name and agreed to be photographed.

We decided that (apart from the one or two rape victims who insisted on anonymity) there would be no unnamed “sources” in these stories. Anyone wanting to speak about the issue we were describing would do so by name, or not at all. This position served us well; a number of former supervisors in the sex-crimes unit gave great quotes on the culture of downgrading crime and falsifying statistics. Their comments added considerable authority to the stories.

Perhaps the most critical decision was the decision to go into print in October, with the first of two series, based on the information we had at that time. What we had was very strong and established the case beyond any doubt. But it wasn’t the whole story. There were statistics we wanted that the Police Department declined to provide, or that it kept promising but not delivering. We also wanted to extract from the police commissioner, John Timoney, an acknowledgement of our findings. He refused to give one. So we faced this question: Should we wait till we had everything, or should we go with what we had?

We decided to go with what we had, and it was the right call. Within a short time, the floodgates opened. The City Council held public hearings on the scandal, and in that setting Timoney was compelled to give the acknowledgement we’d been waiting for. He also ordered detectives to review the buried cases we described. That generated the data we wanted on the precise extent of the statistical fudging.

*****

The St. Paul Pioneer Press won in Beat Reporting for George Dohrmann’s stories about academic fraud in the men’s basketball program at the University of Minnesota. Walker Lundy, editor, writes:

We didn’t face a single dramatic bet-the-story decision on the Gophers basketball scandal story. We did have a series of judgments that became important turns in the story. I never thought any of them were particularly difficult, even though some of them did trigger a public firestorm.

The first was when Sports Editor Emilio Garcia Ruiz gave Gopher beat reporter George Dohrmann the freedom to pursue the story — even though it looked like a very long shot in the beginning. That was an instinctive decision made by an editor who trusted what his reporter was telling him.

The second important decision came when we realized the scandal story would be ready to publish about the time of the Gophers’ first NCAA tournament game. Should we hurry up or delay the story to avoid looking as if we timed it to coincide with the tournament? Managing Editor Vicki Gowler and I decided the only way we could avoid such an accusation was simply to publish it when it was ready, whenever that was. That’s what we did. While we caught hell from hundreds of readers for the timing, the decision took us about two minutes.

The third call was after the initial story landed. The public firestorm against the story was substantial. Instead of retreating, we increased speed and pursued the story even harder. We added reporters from our investigative team, the higher education reporter and sometimes others.

That led to more exclusives and kept us far ahead of the competition, which was also pursuing the story hard.

In summary, this was not a story that required much soul-searching on our part. We had an editor and a reporter who followed their instincts, and we had other reporters and editors who joined in when the story broke to keep us ahead.

*****

The Boston Globe had a contender in Feature Writing with “Choosing Naia,” by reporter Mitch Zuckoff and photographer Suzanne Kreiter. It’s about a couple facing difficult choices when they learn the child they’re expecting will be born with Down syndrome The story won an ASNE Distinguished Writing Award. Matt Storin, editor, writes:

The story behind the story is not particularly dramatic, but it does have a moral: Give good journalists a chance to pursue their own ideas, and it will pay off.

In this case, Mitch Zuckoff, a reporter, and Suzanne Kreiter, a photographer (also husband and wife) had an idea. They had gone through an experience with friends in which a prenatal exam raised the possibility of their having a Down syndrome child. In fact, the couple did not, but the experience left Mitch and Suzanne wondering about the choices that modern science was giving prospective parents.

So they found a couple who agreed to share their experiences of facing the choice of giving birth or aborting the pregnancy when tests indicate a serious problem. The couple had their child, and Naia, after many close calls, survived and is doing well.

Perhaps the major choice we had to make, about two weeks before publication, involved space. We had already committed to devoting 12 full pages to the six-part series (not counting page one display). But the issue of presentation, particularly Suzanne’s excellent photos, came to the fore. How to give adequate space for the words while not giving short shrift to the photos?

So we sat in a room and studied the full complement of Suzanne’s work and looked at the choices. Ben Bradlee, deputy managing editor for projects, argued for three more clear pages. I weighed the pros and cons, and frankly there weren’t many of the latter. Our publisher, Richard Gilman, was aware of the project and is a strong supporter of high-impact journalism. We added the three pages for a total of 15. I think it made a big difference in the project’s impact.

Beyond that it is a simple story: faith in the idea and the skills of two fine journalists.

*****

The Chicago Tribune had a strong entry in Public Service on the failures of the Illinois justice system, by Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills; and was a finalist entry in National Reporting by David Jackson and Cornelia Grumman on private jails for troubled juveniles. Bob Blau, associate managing editor for projects, writes:

The decision to pursue a series on prosecutorial misconduct grew out of the unavoidable fact that it was an important and unexplored topic percolating in our backyard. With the looming prosecution of the so-called Du Page Seven, a criminal case against seven police officers and prosecutors for alleged official misconduct, we asked a simple question: How often does this happen? The assumption was not very often, but the bottom line was that no one really knew for sure. Our legal affairs writer, Ken Armstrong, began the painstaking task of quantifying an answer.

Although the Chicago area was the perfect laboratory for such an investigation, we decided to frame the story nationally, compiling statistics on murder cases reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. The numbers revealed a pattern of abuses that, for the most part, went unpunished. We knew at that point that we could put into context the statistical and anecdotal material we were collecting on the criminal justice system in Illinois, demonstrating that the problems surfacing in our community simply reflected a national story. This endowed the series with the kind of gravity and sweep you hope for and certainly inspired us to push the reporting and writing until we had it right.

When we were done with the prosecutorial misconduct series, another debacle in the criminal justice system was playing out in front of our eyes: the frailties and injustice of capital punishment in Illinois. Anthony Porter had just been freed from Death Row, primarily due to the work of a bunch of college students. Once again, we decided to bring significant reporting firepower to the biggest story of the day, but one that had been covered incrementally by our newspaper and every other.

The key to investigating capital cases in Illinois was the same as studying prosecutorial misconduct: quantifying the nature and number of mistakes in the system. This would allow us to produce original reporting that sidestepped the polemics, politics and punditry that had defined the national debate until then.

After months of research, the raw numbers on incompetent defense counsel, the use of jailhouse informants, etc., proved to be a staggering indictment of a system that was billed as fail-safe. If there was a moment of revelation followed by inspiration to carry on, that was it.

The juvenile series by Dave Jackson had a different genesis. Jackson had come across some shady characters involved in the private juvenile prison business and pitched a story about them. It soon became clear that he was developing a powerful series on a burgeoning multi-billion dollar business that had sprung up on the backs of the state’s neediest wards. While abuses in some of these prisons had been reported on, no one had laid out the landscape of this industry, or the people behind it. While Illinois didn’t have many privatized prisons for juveniles, it did subcontract its foster care to a long roster of questionable private agencies and individuals. Because the prisons and the foster care agencies relied on the same source for clientele — the juvenile courts — we decided to tackle the entire private sector catering to troubled youth.

In each of the projects there was an assumption that we would have a story, a good story, no matter what turns the reporting took. The fact that such high quality reporters were involved gave me the security to let them ride out their hunches and tips without reservation. More than anything, their ability, passion and determination were the key ingredients to making these projects meaningful and successful.

*****

The Columbus Dispatch had a contender in National Reporting on the questionable spending practices of the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal agency formed in 1965 to combat poverty in a long-suffering area. Ben Marrison, editor, writes:

The critical juncture came when the Appalachian Regional Commission refused to give us a description of its master database of projects since 1965. We wanted to take a look at the record layout to see what types of information the agency maintained. At that point, we had not decided to request the full database because the focus of our project had not been narrowly defined.

The agency’s refusal to provide even a list of the column headings of its database led us to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire database in electronic form. An agency official told one of our reporters that the request was ``unprecedented.’’

At that point, we knew we were breaking new ground. And we suspected — rightly, as it turned out — that the agency had much to fear from a full analysis of its spending.

We decided to broaden our focus from the region in Ohio and nearby states to the entire area covered by the ARC. It revealed that Appalachia as defined by the federal government isn’t what 99 people out of 100 would define as Appalachia, and that far too much money was being spent on amusement parks and sports stadiums than the public would deem appropriate.

*****

The Providence Journal had a contender in Feature Writing — a father’s first-person story of his son’s rehabilitation after a paralyzing accident. Joel Rawson, editor, writes:

The story was “Rescuing Jeffrey,” by Richard Galli. Richard is a lawyer who lives in East Greenwich who a long time ago was, for a brief time, a reporter on The Providence Journal. A year ago on July 4 Richard’s only son, Jeffrey, dove into a swimming pool and was paralyzed. The decision to write the story, its content and structure, were solely Richard’s. He wrote the manuscript without consulting with any editor here, and he sent it to us as a freelance submission.

Andy Burkhardt, the city editor, read the manuscript and became Richard’s champion in the newsroom. Andy brought the manuscript to me. It was book length and would require a great deal of newshole and editor time to prepare for publication, so Andy knew he needed me to sign off on the project.

I took the manuscript, set it aside unread and forgot about it. Richard kept after Andy, and Andy kept after me until I finally took it home to read, in bed, late. I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know how it ended.

It was very good. The question seemed to be, could we find the space and time to run a long series that was not commissioned by the editors or written by our staff? Some of our people resented the diversion of time and resources to a freelance submission and said so.

To me the question was, would we publish material that was really good regardless of its authorship — and what would it say about us if we did not? The decision to publish rested with me, but the passion and skill were Richard Galli’s, and the persistence was Andy Burkhardt’s.

“Rescuing Jeffrey” is now out as a book, a selection of the Book of the Month Club.

*****

The St. Petersburg Times was a finalist in both Feature Writing and National Reporting for Anne Hull’s stories on Mexican women who come to work in the crab shacks of North Carolina, “Una Vida Mejor: A Better Life.” Chris Lavin, assistant managing editor for world news, writes:

Anne and I worked together for some years on many projects, and we often didn’t prejudge a subject, determining, say, that this will be a big project or one long story. Generally, she would bring a variety of ideas and scenes and issues to the table, and we would discuss them for their originality, timeliness and potential for story-telling.

In the case of Una Vida Mejor, Anne had heard about these migrant women who were doing a job traditionally held by black women. She thought it might be worth looking into. The issue appealed to me not directly because of the racial issues, but because in the post-NAFTA era, I suspected there would be many changes in the relationship with Mexico. Perhaps this story would allow us to probe that area in a more meaningful way.

Anne made several trips to North Carolina and then rode the bus from Mexico to North Carolina with a group of women. During the debriefing after her return, it became clear to us that the story was bigger than simply the U.S. portion. While life in North Carolina was certainly changing, it was clear that this new wave of migrant labor was going to bring more changes to both ends of the trail, Mexico and the U.S.

Though Anne had been working for several months and was already writing out scenes and dialogue from her exhausting bus trip, it became clear that for this story to have a beginning, middle and an end, we would have to extend the reporting to experience a full season of crab picking. That meant several months more of reporting as the season played out: several more trips to Wanchese and a return trip by bus with the women to Mexico followed by weeks of reporting there.

If we didn’t wait for the women to return to Palomas, to see how they had changed and how their families and community would be changed, it was clear we would not be able to tell the full story. It would have been a good feature with nice pictures but would have lacked the definitive understanding of what was truly going on here.

Without knowing exactly what the payoff would be, we made the decision to extend the reporting, make another long bus ride and pursue the impact in both communities. That was probably one of the key elements that made this story stand out. In a way it was a well-worn issue, migrants in the U.S. But by telling it through the eyes of the migrants, showing as much interest in their city of origin as in their destination, we got a more balanced and more complex view of how the new Mexican/U.S./global economy was operating on a number of levels.

And, of course, Anne is a gifted writer who has the poet’s eye for detail and language.

*****

The Des Moines Register had a contender in Editorial Writing for a campaign spearheaded by Editorial Writer Bill Leonard to seek national-park status for western Iowa’s Loess Hills. Dennis Ryerson, editor, writes:

This was an evolutionary thing for us. One of our writers, Bill Leonard, long has had an interest in the Loess Hills of Western Iowa. Meanwhile, several others of us increasingly have been frustrated at Iowa’s failure to protect public space. We are good at using the land to grow things, but we are slow to appreciate special features that deserve to be protected for the future. Also, we know the state is becoming less competitive in terms of keeping people here and attracting new people. Special features such as the Loess Hills could help ensure Iowa continues to be a special place.

We bundled several approaches into our Loess Hills campaign. We invited Iowans to join us for an exploratory bike ride of the hills. More than 400 people showed up, including the Secretary of the Interior and his top assistant (she’s from Iowa, saw our stuff, and brought him along for the tour). We used our editorial cartoonist to produce lovely water color images of the hills, which we printed, to make Iowans aware of the hills.

We’ve learned that the ordinary once-and-a-while sound-public-policy editorial approach isn’t always sufficient and in fact rarely is. So on top of those kinds of editorials, for months we ran daily “factoids” about the hills, with a graphic/logo, with our editorials, outlining some special feature or special reason the hills need protection.

We drove people nuts. People stopped me to say they were tired of reading about the Loess Hills. We took some criticism for our focus on the issue. But, all the same, Iowans became aware of the treasure. The Legislature took action on behalf of the hills. Congress appropriated money for a federal study of the hills.

We’re still pushing it, and we’re still seeing results. This month the National Parks Conservation Association named the Loess Hills as the only Midwestern feature to be included on its list of the top 10 sites that need to be included under the National Park System.

The Economist wrote that our campaign for the Loess Hills is an example of the old-style newspaper campaign, a little quirky, but successful.

*****

The Washington Post was a finalist in International Reporting for its coverage of Kosovo. Phil Bennett, assistant managing editor for foreign news, writes:

Early in the war in Kosovo, the first day or two, I think, we recognized something essential about the conflict that shaped our approach and in the end distinguished The Post’s coverage. This was the realization that the fate of the civilian population of the province was not a sideshow, but the key to the causes of the war and its outcome.

The plight of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians was more than a humanitarian question; it defined victory and defeat for either side. Belgrade fought to exclude them, through death and exile, from Kosovo’s future. NATO justified its attack on their behalf and equated victory with their return home. What had happened to them, what would happen to them, was the story.

This idea informed a lot of what we did. We encouraged our correspondents to go deeply into the stories of refugees, and to collect testimony voluminous and diverse enough to allow us to construct contemporaneous accounts of what was happening inside Kosovo.

Our enthusiasm for this was encouraged during the first three weeks of the war by the fact that both our correspondents inside Serbia were expelled by the authorities. By the time the war ended, we had built a huge archive of stories from inside the province: not simply anecdotes, but detailed and corroborated portraits of what had occurred. These were borne out when the war ended and journalists were given wider access to Kosovo.

I think we made one other decision, or set of decisions, that helped produce extraordinary journalism: We learned to combine highly original reporting and writing by individual correspondents with collaborative deadline projects by several reporters working together.

One of the things I value most about The Post is its tradition of recognizing and encouraging daring and powerful, and sometimes idiosyncratic, work from individual correspondents. In the case of the war in Kosovo, we were able to combine this kind of intimate, original, narrative journalism — by David Finkel, Peter Finn, and Dan Williams — with occasional collective efforts that gave readers a comprehensive experience of the war and its effects. For an editor, this was an unforgettable result. I only wish I knew how to reproduce it.

*****

The Blade, Toledo, Ohio was a finalist in Investigative Reporting for reporter Sam Roe’s series on government and industry misconduct in production of beryllium, a metal used in the construction of nuclear bombs. Ron Royhab, editor, writes:

I’m not sure our series had one critical juncture. The articles were based on a lengthy investigation and a review of thousands of documents, so as you can imagine, there were many, many decisions along the way.

But if I had to choose one turning point, it would be when we realized our story was not just local, that it had tremendous magnitude with far-reaching, national implications. At that point, we made the key decision: We would spend as much time as necessary to tell the story thoroughly. We maintained that commitment throughout the project, allowing Blade investigative reporter Sam Roe nearly two years of uninterrupted time to complete the series.

This is an extraordinary length of time for a newspaper to devote to a single story, but we decided there was no other way. We knew this was a powerful story of government and industry misconduct, affecting scores of lives, and we needed to nail it down.

To do that — to expose the government’s misdeeds and the industry’s false statements to workers — the reporter reviewed ten of thousands of court, scientific, and recently declassified government records, an effort that required numerous Freedom of Information Act requests and trips to Colorado, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

This was time-consuming, but necessary. You simply can’t cut corners in investigative reporting.

Corbin is editor of the Daily Press in Newport News, Va.