NR_Spring16_covers_spine_072016_Final.indd 1 8/8/16 4:17 PM The Nieman Foundation Contributors for Journalism at Harvard University www.niemanreports.org Julia Keller (page 4) won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. She is a 1998 Nieman Fellow and former cultural critic at the Chicago Tribune. Her latest novel, “Sorrow Road” (St. Martin’s), is the fi fth in a series set in her publisher home state of West Virginia. Ann Marie Lipinski editor Keith O’Brien (page 16) James Geary is a former reporter for The senior editor Boston Globe, a correspondent Jan Gardner for National Public Radio, and author. He has written for editorial assistant The New York Times Magazine, Eryn M. Carlson Politico, and Slate, among design other publications. Pentagram editorial offices James T. Hamilton (page 21) One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, is the Hearst Professor of MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, Communication and director [email protected] of the Journalism Program at Stanford University. An economist, Copyright 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. he is the author of “Democracy’s Periodicals postage paid at Detectives: The Economics Boston, Massachusetts and of Investigative Journalism.” additional entries Alicia Shepard (page 24) is a subscriptions/business longtime media writer, former NPR 617-496-6299, [email protected] ombudsman, and author of “Woodward Subscription $25 a year, and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of $40 for two years; Watergate.” She returned to the States add $10 per year for foreign airmail. this spring after two years working Single copies $7.50. with Afghan journalists and with Back copies are available from U.S. A.I.D. in Afghanistan. the Nieman offi ce. Please address all subscription Michael Fitzgerald (page 32) correspondence to: is a 2011 Nieman Fellow who is One Francis Avenue, articles editor at The Boston Globe Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 Magazine. He has written about and change of address information to: innovation for The Boston Globe, P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 Fast Company, The Economist, ISSN Number 0028-9817 The Wall Street Journal, and Postmaster: Send address changes to other publications. Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 Howard Reich (page 40) is the Emmy Award-winning arts critic of Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) the Chicago Tribune and has covered is published in March, June, music for the newspaper since September, and December by 1978. He is the author of fi ve books the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, including “Portraits in Jazz” and One Francis Avenue, “Let Freedom Swing.” He has served Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 on the Pulitzer music jury four times. NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd A 7/29/16 2:07 PM Contents Summer 2016 / Vol. 70 / No. 3 Eyes on the Prize p.2 The Pulitzer’s greatest achievement over the past 100 years lies not in naming winners, but in setting standards By Ann Marie Lipinski THE POWER BEAT p.4 Power is arguably the subject of everything journalism does and is. How a century of Pulitzer-winning work has held to account those who abuse power By Julia Keller Impact p.16 Competing news outlets are joining forces on investigative reporting projects that none could manage on their own By Keith O’Brien THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE p.24 Though there is no Pulitzer category for business reporting, prize-winning investigations increasingly probe the power of money and corporations to affect our lives By Alicia Shepard PULITZER’S FORGOTTEN CLASSICS p.32 10 stories that exposed abuses of power—and deserve to be remembered today By Michael Fitzgerald PULITZER’S POWER STRUGGLE p.40 For decades, jazz had been shut out of consideration for the Music Prize. How board deliberations leading up to Wynton Marsalis’s 1997 win changed all that By Howard Reich The Nieman Pulitzer Winners p.48 A chronological listing of Nieman Fellows who have received a Pulitzer Prize Speaking Truth to Power p.52 Thirty-fi ve works by Nieman Pulitzer winners that tackle abuses of power Cover design by Anthony Burrill NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 1 7/25/16 10:32 AM FROM THE CURATOR EYES ON THE PRIZE The Pulitzer’s greatest achievement over the past 100 years lies not in naming winners, but in setting standards BY ANN MARIE LIPINSKI 2 nieman reports summer 2016 NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 2 7/25/16 10:32 AM in this centennial year of the Pulitzer Even the Pulitzer Prize Board has For 100 years, Prize, here are some works I’ve been think- acknowledged the flaws of past deliber- ing about: Kevin Boyle’s “Arc of Justice,” ations, perhaps most notably in the mu- the Pulitzer a powerful narrative about murder and sic category. For generations the prize has occupied a racism in Jazz Age Detroit; Jerry Mitchell’s was limited to music in the European rare position investigations of civil rights cold cases for classical tradition, a habit that brought The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, public ridicule to the board in 1965 when it on our cultural stories that contributed to Ku Klux Klan denied a special citation to jazz giant Duke landscape, in convictions; the Chicago Tribune’s multi- Ellington. The decision was a rejection of part because the year investigation of shameful abuses in the one of America’s greatest art forms, born nation’s death penalty machinery, journal- of the African-American experience, and deliberations ism that set innocent men free. two of the Pulitzer jury members resigned. audaciously None of these won a Pulitzer. Each was “Jazz, blues, gospel, country, spirituals, aspire to defi ne a fi nalist for the prize, bested by another and every other genre the United States a standard for extraordinary entry. They are among gave to the world, all had been excluded. the volumes of righteous work that sur- Completely,” writes critic Howard Reich in excellence vived a jury’s vetting but didn’t ascend this issue. It would be more than 30 years in the Pulitzer Prize Board’s fi nal review. before determined board members created And they are in good company. I recent- the conditions for Wynton Marsalis to win ly checked to see for which of his novels the prize for “Blood on the Fields,” a work F. Scott Fitzgerald had won a Pulitzer, he will be talking about at Nieman’s Pulitzer ing news: we hadn’t won. I called my hus- only to discover he had won for none. Centennial celebration this September. band, said there would be no champagne, Add Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, The board eventually awarded Ellington and went back to work. Later that day, Flannery O’Connor, and others to the ranks the citation, 25 years after his death. when The Associated Press began posting of American icons whose honors did not Prizes are a fickle business. Every the annual roll call of winners, I stood at include a Pulitzer, and not winning the prize new class of Pulitzer winners is ordained a friend’s terminal to see which of the other can seem its own distinction. by a vote of fewer than 20 arbiters, each excellent fi nalists had earned the investiga- In an ornery 1985 essay in The New a captive of biases and fancies. Prizes are tive prize. His sluggish computer struggled York Times Book Review, critic and author imprecise. They do not submit to scales or to keep pace with the announcements and William Gass excoriated Pulitzer fiction scoreboards. so I didn’t understand the sudden, swell- winners in particular as “pure miss” and But that is not the same as arbitrary. ing rumble of newsroom applause. It was prize-giving in general as fl awed by design. For 100 years, the Pulitzer has occupied a disorienting moment—the sound of He joined other critics in arguing that deci- a rare position on our cultural landscape, lightning in a bottle with no visible proof. sions such as awarding Margaret Mitchell’s in part because the deliberations audacious- When the bulletin mercifully crawled across popular “Gone With the Wind” over William ly aspire to defi ne a standard for excellence. my friend’s screen, we learned what others Faulkner’s masterful “Absalom, Absalom!” In turn, the debate ignited by the annual in the newsroom already knew: our editor’s were not in the service of excellence— announcement of winners has contribut- source had been wrong. or even in service of selecting that year’s ed to one of the country’s longest-running I tell this story because we lost and we best novel about the American South. conversations about what matters in jour- won that day, and while winning was pref- “Any award-giving outfi t,” Gass claimed, nalism and the arts. Is there an occasion erable, it would take extraordinary hubris “is doomed by its cumbersome commit- that more powerfully stitches journalism, to believe that there was more science tee structure to make mistakes, to pass poetry, history, playwriting, biography, than fortuity in the outcome. I know that. the masters by in silence and applaud the music, and fi ction into a refl ection of the Some years later, when I joined the Pulitzer apprentices, the mimics, the hacks, or to American story? That story can be tragic— Prize Board, I experienced fi rsthand the honor one of those agile surfers who ride Vietnam, priest abuse, Toni Morrison’s informed and often passionate debates every fresh wave.” “Beloved”—and it can be exalting— that lifted one fi ne work above another, A winner himself made national news Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” sometimes by the thinnest margin.