Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism [Paperback]

Roy J. Harris Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0826218911 | ISBN-13: 978-0826218919 | Edition: Revised edition, New in Paper

No journalism awards are awaited with as much anticipation as the Pulitzer Prizes. And among those Pulitzers, none is more revered than the Joseph Pulitzer Gold Medal. "Pulitzer's Gold" is the first book to trace the ninety-year history of the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded annually to a newspaper rather than to individuals, in the form of that Gold Medal. Exploring this service-journalism legacy, Roy Harris recalls dozens of 'stories behind the stories', often allowing the journalists involved to share their own accounts. Harris takes his Gold Medal saga through two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights struggle, and the Vietnam era before bringing public-service journalism into a twenty-first century that includes 9/11, a Catholic Church scandal, and corporate exposes. "Pulitzer's Gold" offers a new way of looking at journalism history and practice and a new lens through which to view America's own story.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A gold mine of inspiration for both journalists and non- journalists….Pulitzer's Gold offers marvelous storytelling, real-life adventures, and absolute proof that journalism can change our world for the better.”
—Jeffrey Zaslow, co-author, The Last Lecture, and Wall Street Journal columnist

“This well-researched and engrossingly presented study chronicles time-bound cases of award-winning journalism and timeless lessons for news people and citizens who care about reportage with reverberation. Pulitzer’s Gold is first-rate journalism history.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer

“It is a must read for those who want an inside look at journalism at its best. There is no higher calling among American newspapers than public service journalism, and Roy Harris delves into it with flair and expertise.”
—Gene Roberts, cowinner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History

“[A] fine contribution to both scholarship and instruction, a book that can be read for fun, consulted for research, and assigned for class.”
— Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

“It is loaded with the Aha! moments that make us, as journalists, glad we passed up the big-bucks MBA track to try to save the world instead.”
—Nieman Reports

“At a time when the business model of the American newspaper lies broken, this book tells us, by vivid examples, why newspapers are essential to our national well-being. It is a sobering yet inspiring message.”
—John S. Carroll, former Los Angeles Times editor and 1993–2002 Pulitzer Prize Board member

About the Author

Roy J. Harris Jr. served from 1971 to 1994 as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, including six years as deputy chief of its fourteen-member Los Angeles bureau. He then spent thirteen years as senior editor of The Economist Group’s CFO magazine. Early in his career he reported at the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Missouri; Revised edition, New in Paper edition (February 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826218911
• ISBN-13: 978-0826218919
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,443,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roy J. Harris Jr. has been a journalist for some of the nation's most respected news organizations for four decades. From 1971 to 1994 he served as a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, including six years as deputy chief of its 14-member Los Angeles bureau. His next 13 years were as senior editor of The Economist Group's Boston-based CFO Magazine and CFO.com. He currently works from his home in Hingham, Mass.

As a commentator on press public service and the Pulitzer Prizes, he regularly contributes to the Web site of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based Poynter Institute. He has taught journalism as an adjunct professor at Emerson College in Boston, and loves discussing Pulitzer-winning journalism with college classes around the country. While with CFO, from 2006 to 2007 Harris was national president of the 800-member American Society of Business Publication Editors. He currently serves as ASBPE Foundation president, and is a founding member of the ASBPE ethics committee.

The son of a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Harris began his career as a copyboy and later a reporter for the Post-Dispatch. While attending Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism he was managing editor of the Daily Northwestern. In 1968 he reported for the Los Angeles Times, where one assignment was helping cover the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

After three years at the Journal in Pittsburgh he moved to the West Coast, taking over the Journal's aerospace beat and writing about airlines, entertainment and sports--including the 1984 Summer Olympics. As deputy bureau chief he helped coordinate coverage of such stories as the 1992 race rioting that followed the police beating of Rodney King, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

His research for Pulitzer's Gold began in 2002, when he returned to St. Louis to make a presentation, on the hundredth anniversary of his father's birth, about the five Public Service Pulitzers won by the Post-Dispatch.

IN THE VIDEO ATTACHED TO THIS SITE Harris discusses the courage of journalists covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping ride into the heart of powerful journalism, January 18, 2008

By 

R. Freedman (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism (Hardcover)

Roy Harris has done a tremendous job bringing much forgotten history alive with his eloquent book Pulitzer's Gold. In the tradition of great historical writers like Barbara Tuchman, Harris weaves together rich strands of narrative to tell the compelling stories behind the most influential journalism of our times like the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, the year-long investigation into the Watergate break-in by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and the outing of the Boston Diocese's shocking cover-up of the sexual predators in its midst. These stories and others are already familiar to us but what's not familiar are the stories behind the stories, and by filling in these details, Harris does a tremendous service not only to journalists but to anyone for whom history is a dynamic, urgent teacher. In reading Harris' gripping accounts of how these stories unfolded, I was reminded how vital good historical writing is to our understanding of what's going on today. This book is sure to attract a readership outside the communities of journalists and historians for whom these stories will be engrossing; I suspect anyone with a thirst for understanding our contemporary culture will find his writing invaluable. Maybe even more importantly, they'll find the stories just a good read. After all, how many of us knew that both the New York Times and the Washington Post were almost bypassed for the Public Service gold medal by the Pulitzer committee for their respective work on the Pentagon Papers and Watergate? And for the Watergate affecianado, Harris' interviews with Bob Woodward and others provides entirely fresh accounts of those pivotal events from the people that were there.That's living history.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Gold---Five Shining Stars for "Pulitizer's Gold", January 28, 2008

By 

Lois-ellin Datta - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism (Hardcover)

Pure Gold---Five Shining Stars for "Pulitizer's Gold"

"river run, past Eve and Adam's," so begins Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" that boisterous tale tracing through time and space the story of Anna Livia Plurabelle, the Liffey, and her people. As we reach the sea, the last words of the last chapter, ("A way a lone a last a loved a long the") return to the first. "Pulitzer's Gold" has that grand cycling sweep. Beginning in Chapter 1 with the heart-holding, eye-catching stories of the two 2006 prizes (for coverage of Hurricane Katrina by the Sun Herald and the Times Picayune), the book's close celebrates the 200l award to the Oregonian for uncovering U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service abuses.

The 21 glorious chapters interweave three eternal golden braids, as intricate as any described by Hofstadter in Escher, Gödel, and Bach. These are (1) the story of the Pulitzer Prize itself, a story of growth, change, challenges, and evolution, (2) the individual stories of the newspapers, publishers, editors, and investigative reporters on whose walls shine the gold medals, and (3) the winning stories themselves, an archive of democracy in America, 1917 to the present.

Written tautly, wittily, masterfully, Pulitzer's Gold represents in itself a monumental investigative expedition. Archival research, yes, but also years of meetings, interviews, conversations, verifying and expanding what was being discovered. As good a read as a novel, this is equally a work of scholarship, each chapter detailing the sources, and illuminated by a comprehensive appendix of all the Pulitzer journal awards.

The bigger story is told through the individual stories, an approach that is endlessly fascinating. This is, in a way, the Vietnam Memorial Wall of courageous, high risk, public service journalism. The names and to a good extent the personalities whose best and brightest work may have gone into each Gold Medal award live again in this book. They are spoken of with the respect, honor, and appreciation that one outstanding journalist---Harris--- can give to another, a discerning, differentiating, discriminating honor someone outside of journalism probably could not fully catch with a guide such as Harris.

Equally valuable is the mother lode of information most of us may not know about the prizes: for example, that the applicants self-nominate and have to prepare portfolios showing why the story they propose should be recognized. For example, that consequences---results, impacts, actions---are one of the three criteria for the award, anticipating by many years the expectation that claims for merit have to be backed up by evidence of good effects.

Indeed, this book had its beginning in a presentation given by author Roy J. Harris Jr. on the one hundredth birthday of his father, Roy J. Harris Sr, of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. In this presentation, Harris Jr. not only honored his award-winning father but also reflected on the newspaper's then unique record of receiving five Pulitzer Gold awards. "What," he asked then, "was happening in this paper, at this time, that raised the St. Louis Post Dispatch to such a level of achievement?" The St. Louis Post Dispatch was among the journalistic homes of the Pulitzer family, but there was more happening---actually, the procedures of the award intended to reduce favoritism may have acted against specific recognition. What was that "more? Harris shared with us in this presentation what he learned about the way in which courageous public service journalism is created.

Now, seven years later, we are fortunate to have a full picture, across all the winners, that offers a basis in evidence for consideration of the organizational qualities and the individual qualities encouraging the risks of public service investigations. Pulitzer's Gold is a grand panoramic picture, a grand book to study, and a grand book to read.

If there is a "but" to this marvelous book, it may be a yearning for a closing chapter tracing the meaning of the strands and putting together an initial overall answer to what makes for a great newspaper (by Pulitzer standards) and where we are today. For example, the Pulitzer strand shows many changes: are the forces that drove these needed changes still vital? What may be ahead for the Pulitzer Board (and committees) in the changing future?

In contrast, there is splendid detail about each winning story but less sense of growth and more sense of a stasis in that the stories are mostly about: corruption and catastrophes. Some hard-hitting, exceptionally courageous stories about the Ku Klux Klan helped do their good work, and the Klan has disappeared in gold award winners in the last decades. Environmental issues can be seen expanding in passion and depth. Bad government is an enduring topic. Few investigative, award-winning stories seem to honor what works. Is this apparent pattern because public service journalism as anticipated in the Freedom of Speech clauses is essential to telling truths to power, particularly its inconvenient, bad, and ugly sides? Having worked for the U.S. General Accountability Office, I fully appreciate the need for as many trust-worthy feet as possible to jump into that scale of justice, but a last chapter really getting into Harris's ideas about the grand themes would be, well, grand.

The "but" is minor relative to all that is excellent in "Pulitzer's Gold." From the
elegant, appropriate cover designed by Kristie Lee, to the beautifully typography and layout, to the superb contents, this book is highly recommended. Applause to RJH, Jr., who has continued the noble legacy of the "century of those who mined the gold" and in doing so, help us honor the courage of those who are writing next year's award winning story.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A distinguished tribute to the journalists who labored to bring the truth to light and help make America better place to live, February 2, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism (Hardcover)

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Roy J. Harris Jr. presents Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism, an in-depth account of the ninety-year history of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, especially the most exalted prize of the Joseph Pulitzer Gold Medal. From accountings of the distinguished journalistic coverage that exposed sexual predators among Catholic priests, to the New York Times' role in helping the community cope after the September 11th attacks, to the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's uncovering of the Watergate scandal, to the Boston Post's revelation of swindling schemes hatched by Charles Ponzi and much more, Pulitzer's Gold takes the reader on a one-of-a-kind historical tour. A distinguished tribute to the journalists who labored to bring the truth to light and help make America better place to live, as well as a studious history of journalism's most prestigious award.