Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism (Hardcover)

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Review
CHOICE Calls Pulitzer's Gold Essential

One-time Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee called it Big Casino, the cream of the cream.New Orleans Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss called it simply: the Pulitzer. Both these top journalists were referring to the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the most prestigious of the Pulitzers and the subject of his book. [In Pulitzer's Gold] Harris looks at the background, intrique, turns and twists, rivalry, and unapologetic joys surround the gold medal. Few people, even those on the staffs of awarding winning newspapers, know much about the publications honored with the public service prize, and Harris's intent is to offer evidence--through research and critical assessment--that newspapers are indeed public servants. He succeeds very well. The treatment is not chronological. Harris begins with coverage of Hurricane Katrina and moves through sexual abuse by Priests, wrongdoing by the Los Angeles city government, exposure of secret land deals in eastern Long Island, investigation of Synanon, and neglect and abuse of children with mental retardation. With this volume, Harris adds significantly to the legacy of Joseph Pulitzer. A companion to John Hohenberg's The Pulitzer Diaries: Inside America's Greatest Prize, the book includes abundant photographs, comprehensive lists of all the Pulitzer Prizes, and an excellent bibliography. Summing up: Essential. All readers, all levels --CHOICE, July 2008--Reviewed by S. W. Whyte, Montgomery County Community College

Excellent Book Shows Newspapers Do Matter

Anyone wanting to understand the proud tradition of high-quality newspaper journalism will find Roy J. Harris Jr.'s Pulitzer's Gold a satisfying and instructive read, with an implicit warning about the future of journalism

Harris is a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose father, Roy J.
Harris, was a Post-Dispatch reporter. His reporting, with that of George Thiem of the Chicago Daily News, won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1950 for exposing 37 Illinois newsmen on that state's payroll.

Until The New York Times won its fifth for coverage of the victims of Sept.
11, the Post-Dispatch had won the most Public Service awards, considered the most prestigious of the Pulitzer Prizes. These awards are for meritorious journalism that benefits the public good.

Thus, the New York Times won in 1972 for its coverage of the Pentagon Papers, which also triggered a landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing the right to publish in virtually every case regarding national security. The Washington Post won in 1973 for its reporting on Watergate and President Richard M. Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up. The Boston Globe won in 2003 for its exposure of Roman Catholic priests who molested children and the way church authorities covered up the crimes.

Jump onto the Internet today and you can read of the supposed irrelevance of newspapers. They are eclipsed by instant news, which is often titillating tidbits that are swept away in a few hours by more of the same.

As an implicit counterargument, Harris' carefully researched book tells the story behind each Public Service Award, from the New York Times in 1918 for publishing official documents of European statesmen relating to World War I, through the Wall Street Journal last year on corporate backdating of stock options for business executives.

What is so obvious in Harris' telling of these stories is the invaluable contribution committed newspaper publishers and dedicated reporters and editors have made to the quality of civic and public behavior. Where would we be as a country had the Washington Post not uncovered the many crimes around Watergate? What would we not understand had the Sun-Herald of Biloxi, Miss., and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans not written so bravely and thoroughly of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?

The great question, not only for journalists, but for the citizens of the United States, is whether newspapers will continue to aspire to superior reporting and coverage in the face of the Internet, the incessant drumbeat of criticism and ridicule from the right and the seeming indifference of an increasingly larger share of the public to the important issues of the day.

Harris' book lays out the case for excellence in public service by all journalists, who Joseph Pulitzer believed were integral to a well-functioning democracy. The contrast with the short-sighted, self-absorbed blather that trashes newspapers, which are uniquely suited to pursuing long-term, in-depth investigative reporting, is quite stark. In short, democracy needs reporters and editors who can take a long, hard look at our common issues, unaffected by ratings, rumors, bling and profits.
That's the challenge for publishers and senior editors that Harris raises in his excellent book --St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 9, 2008--Reviewed by Repps Hudson

Stories that Set Gold Standard for Journalism

Shrinking circulations. Declining advertising dollars. Staff cutbacks.
Reduced newsgathering resources. Uncertain tomorrows.

American newspapers today face odds a Vegas bookie or a social Darwinist might find daunting. With worrisome frequency, the news business itself is the subject of woe-be-us reporting.

Dire dispatches notwithstanding, the longer view of ink-on-paper journalism stresses civic surveillance and commitment, providing a hopeful counterpoint. Exigencies of the moment should never obscure the historic significance of a free press to the workings of democracy.

Pulitzer's Gold by Roy J. Harris Jr. is both antidote and anthem. This well-researched and engrossingly presented study chronicles time-bound cases of award-winning journalism with timeless lessons for news people and citizens who care about reportage with reverberation.

Harris, a veteran editor and reporter, relates stories behind the stories that won the Gold Medal for public service in the annual Pulitzer Prize competition. By interviewing journalists participating in Gold Medal performances, Harris takes a reader inside the newsroom. He provides detailed accounts of the Washington Post for its revelations about Watergate, the Boston Globe for its reporting on the scandal involving Catholic clergy, and the New York Times for its comprehensive handling of post-September 11 America. Recent cases tend to receive more extensive treatment, but the author also mines the Pulitzer archives and historical accounts for background illuminating earlier winners.

Since the Gold Medal is an institutional rather than an individual prize, the award always involves collaboration among staff members - reporters, editors, photographers - and the author deftly probes the process...
Pulitzer's Gold is first-rate journalism history. Especially when the future of the news business seems murky and the legion of media critics keeps growing, Harris' book celebrates the gold standard of press coverage
- work of consequence worth striving to emulate as a service to the public and to American democracy. --Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 2008--Reviewed by Robert Schmuhl

Product Description
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. Harris recalls dozens of stories behind the stories, often allowing the journalists involved to share their own accounts. Readers will recognize some of the stories, like the New York Times Pentagon Papers exclusive and the Watergate scandal that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein dug out for the Washington Post. But 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 today s age of environmental and corporate exposes. Story after story illustrates how for small town papers or metropolitan dailies alike, public-service reporting is a point of pride for the American press.

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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
deep throat, journalism categories, public service category, nomination letter, journalism prizes, abusive priests Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Gold Medal, Public Service, New York Times, Pulitzer Prize, Joseph Pulitzer, Washington Post, Louis Post-Dispatch, Pentagon Papers, Los Angeles Times, Daily News, White House, Sun Herald, New Orleans, United States, Nation Challenged, Knight Ridder, North Carolina, Philadelphia Inquirer, Portraits of Grief, Spotlight Team, World War, Long Island, Cardinal Law, Lufkin News, Columbia University Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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6 Reviews 5 star:  (5) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   8 of 8 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)    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. Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   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)    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. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   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 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. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 6 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars The story behind the top stories Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public-Service Journalism Given a choice between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, Thomas... Read more Published 4 months ago by Martha M. Davis 4.0 out of 5 stars Get a glimpse of the workings of a daily newspaper The author of this book is a colleague of mine, which is how I first learned about the book. I'm very glad I came across it. Read more Published 4 months ago by Martha Spizziri 5.0 out of 5 stars A salute to "Pulitzer's Gold" Roy Harris has done a thorough and masterful job telling the stories of how the most worthy of all Pulitzler Prizes have been won. Read more Published 9 months ago by Jeff Rowe Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 6 customer reviews...

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