NEW YORK — Stories and photos that detailed mass killings, from Korea to Colorado to Kosovo, have earned Pulitzer prizes in journalism. Among the winners was The Associated Press, which earned an investigative reporting award for its series on a bloody incident involving U.S. soldiers early in the Korean war.
In the honors announced Monday at Columbia University, The Washington Post won three Pulitzers, for public service, criticism and feature photography; The Wall Street Journal won two, for national reporting on U.S. defense spending and deployment in the post-Cold War era and for columnist Paul Gigot's commentary on public affairs.
Both Denver daily newspapers were honored for coverage of the Columbine High School massacre. The Denver Post staff won for breaking news reporting and the Denver Rocky Mountain News photo staff for spot news photography.
The international reporting prize went to The Village Voice, a New York City weekly, for Mark Schoofs' series on the AIDS crisis in Africa. The Pulitzer for explanatory journalism went to Eric Newhouse of the Great Falls Tribune in Great Falls, Mont., for stories on alcohol abuse and its impact on the community. George Dohrmann of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn., won the beat reporting award for revelations of academic fraud in the University of Minnesota men's basketball program.
The award for feature writing went to a portrait of Gee's Bend, a remote Alabama settlement inhabited by many descendants of slaves, by J.R. Moehringer, the Los Angeles Times' bureau chief in New Orleans. The Pulitzer for editorial writing went to John C. Bersia of The Orlando Sentinel in Orlando, Fla., for his criticism of predatory lending practices, and Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Lexington, Ky., won for editorial cartooning.
In the arts categories, Donald Margulies' off-Broadway play "Dinner With Friends," won the drama prize, David M. Kennedy's book, "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-45," won for history, and the general non-fiction prize went to John W. Dower's "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II." Stacy Schiff's "Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)" won for biography and Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies," a collection of short stories, was named for fiction. "Repair" by C.K. Williams won for poetry, and composer Lewis Spratlan's "Life is a Dream, Opera in Three Acts: Act 2, Concert Version," got the music Pulitzer. The AP series, describing the alleged mass killing by U.S. soldiers of hundreds of Korean civilians at No Gun Ri, a railroad bridge in South Korea, was reported by a team of three reporters, Charles Hanley, Sang-hun Choe and Martha Mendoza, with research assistance by Randy Herschaft.
The July 1950 incident occurred as American forces fought rear-guard actions against North Korean invaders who were thought to be infiltrating fleeing refugees. The previously undisclosed details have prompted investigations by Congress and the Defense Department.
The AP team thanked the Pulitzer board and jurors, but said the victory was "tempered by the nature of what we confirmed . . . the greater tributes today belong to the U.S. Army veterans, men of conscience, who helped us, and most of all to the Korean survivors who would not let their quest for truth die."
The Washington Post's gold medal for public service was for stories by Katherine Boo about neglect and abuse in city-run homes for the mentally retarded. The Post also won last year; it was the first time any paper won public service two years running. Guzy said Kosovo was "one time where photos were indeed an eloquent voice for the powerless and clearly influenced world opinion." Each winning entry receives $5,000, except for the newspaper public service award, which brings a gold medal to the newspaper winner.
On The Net: Pulitzer site: www.pulitzer.org .