Pulitzer Pairs For LA Times, WSJ
The Los Angeles Times won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including the public service award for exposing deadly medical problems and racial injustice at an inner-city hospital. The Wall Street Journal also won two, including one for stories about the plight of cancer survivors.
The Associated Press won for a series of photographs of bloody year-long combat inside Iraqi cities.
As a crowd gathered around the photo desk at AP headquarters, President and CEO Tom Curley stood atop a chair beside Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll to congratulate the staff.
"These folks showed incredible courage this year," Curley said. "They took some extraordinary pictures, they captured some incredible moments in history and they did it in a way that made all of us proud."
The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., won for breaking news reporting for its coverage of the resignation of New Jersey's governor after he announced he was gay and confessed to adultery with a male lover.
Nigel Jaquiss of the Willamette Week of Portland, Ore., won for investigative reporting for revealing a former governor's sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl.
"I'm really surprised — it's just a tremendous honor. I never thought it would happen to me," Jaquiss tearfully told his colleagues at the weekly.
The Boston Globe's Gareth Cook won for explanatory journalism for detailing the complex scientific and ethical dimensions of stem-cell research.
The Journal's Amy Dockser Marcus won for her "masterful" stories about patients, families and physicians that illuminated the often unseen world of cancer survivors," the judges said. The paper's other award went to Joe Morgenstern for movie reviews.
Walt Bogdanich of The New York Times won for national reporting for stories about the corporate coverup of responsibility for fatal accidents at railroad crossings.
Two prizes were awarded for international reporting: Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times for her reporting from Russia and Newsday's Dele Olojede for his look at Rwanda a decade after its genocidal civil war.
In awarding the public service citation, the judges praised the Times for "its courageous, exhaustively researched series exposing deadly medical problems and racial injustice at a major public hospital."
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Each prize is worth $10,000, except for public service, which is recognized with a gold medal.
The awards are given by Columbia University on the recommendation of the 18-member Pulitzer board, which considers nominations from jurors in each category.
In arts, "Doubt," the first Broadway play by Oscar-winning writer John Patrick Shanley, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Shanley's play opened on Broadway just last week to critical acclaim after an off-Broadway run. It tells the story of a confrontation between a nun and a Roman Catholic priest at a Bronx parish; she suspects the priest of molesting a male student.
Shanley, who has written a number of successful off-Broadway plays, captured the Academy Award for best screenplay for "Moonstruck" in 1988.
The Pulitzer for fiction went to Marilynne Robinson for "Gilead," her poetic, modern-day tale of a dying Iowa preacher. Her first novel, "Housekeeping," appeared in 1980 and was nominated for a Pulitzer.
"It's such a private thing to write a book, and when I'm writing I can't think about whether it will appeal to other people," said Robinson, a teacher at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. "But it's such a profound treat that people do find it meaningful."
David Hackett Fischer, a professor at Brandeis University, won the prize for history for his "Washington's Crossing." His previous books include "Paul Revere's Ride."
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan won in the biography category for "de Kooning: An American Master." Their sweeping biography of the artist was 10 years in the making, following de Kooning from his work as an abstract expressionist through his battles with alcoholism and Alzheimer's.
Stevens is currently the art critic for New York magazine, while Swan is a veteran magazine writer who has worked for Time and Newsweek.
National poet laureate Ted Kooser has won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for "Delights & Shadows." Kooser, who lives in Garland, Neb., is a retired insurance executive who was named to his current position last August.
He has written 10 collections of poetry, and his work has appeared in a number of periodicals including The New Yorker, The Hudson Review and Prairie Schooner.
Steve Coll collected his second Pulitzer, winning in general non-fiction for "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001."
In 1990, while serving as South Asia bureau chief for The Washington Post, he captured a Pulitzer for explanatory journalism. The author of four books, he is now an associate editor at the Post.
And Steven Stucky won the music award for "Second Concerto for Orchestra." His winning piece debuted last March, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.