The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and the much smaller Sun Herald of Gulfport, Miss., were each awarded Pulitzer Prizes for public service Monday for their coverage under trying circumstances of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated their home regions along the Gulf Coast.
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The Times-Picayune, which had to evacuate its building as floodwaters rose, also won the Pulitzer for breaking news for its coverage of the storm. Even though the paper was forced to suspend its print publication for three days, it continued to produce online editions that drew readers from around the world. The Pulitzer board also gave The Washington Post four awards and The New York Times three, many of those prizes affirming what the winners said was the watchdog role of journalism as guardians of the public trust.
The Washington Post's winners included Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith, for investigative reporting for exposing the role of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff in corruption in Washington; Dana Priest, for beat reporting for articles about secret prisons and other controversial aspects of the American government's counterterrorism campaign; and David Finkel, for explanatory journalism for detailing the U.S. government's attempt to bring democracy to Yemen. The Post's fashion critic, Robin Givhan, won the Pulitzer for criticism.
The New York Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune both won in the national reporting category. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The Times were recognized for their series of articles exposing a secret domestic wiretapping program. The staffs of the Union-Tribune and the Copley News Service won for disclosing that Randy Cunningham, a former congressman from California, had taken bribes, which ultimately led to his being sent to prison.
The New York Times also won for international reporting, for articles by Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley on the rough justice often meted out by China's legal system. Nicholas D. Kristof of The Times won the Pulitzer for commentary, for bringing international attention to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
In winning the Public Service Pulitzer, considered the highest honor in journalism, The Times-Picayune was cited "for its heroic, multifaceted coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, making exceptional use of the newspaper's resources to serve an inundated city even after evacuation."
The Pulitzer board praised the Sun Herald for "providing a lifeline for devastated readers, in print and online, during their time of greatest need."
Both newspapers rejoiced over their gold medals, but out of respect for the deaths caused by Katrina and the hardships borne by the staffs, they celebrated without the champagne that typically accompanies such events.