Congrats to SEJ Members Dan Fagin and David Philipps, and All 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners

SEJ congratulates the 2014 Pulitzer Prize winners on their stellar achievement, including writers, editors and freelance friends at The Washington Post and The Guardian, which won the prize for Public Service, and Newsday as a Finalist; The Boston Globe Staff for Breaking News Reporting, and The Arizona Republic Staff (covering fast-moving wildfire) and The Washington Post Staff as Finalists; and for Editorial Writing the Editorial Staff of The Oregonian, and Dante Ramos of The Boston Globe and Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register.

Members of SEJ won the Prize in the following categories:

General Nonfiction: Special congratulations to past SEJ board president Dan Fagin for "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation" (Bantam Books), a book that "deftly combines investigative reporting and historical research to probe a New Jersey seashore town’s cluster of childhood cancers linked to water and air pollution." See early rave reviews on Dan’s SEJ Member Spotlight profile.

National Reporting: David Philipps of The Gazette, Colorado Springs, CO, for “expanding the examination of how wounded combat veterans are mistreated, focusing on loss of benefits for life after discharge by the Army for minor offenses, stories augmented with digital tools and stirring congressional action.”

Kudos to other winners and finalists who reported on important issues of the environment:

  • Chris Hamby of The Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C., who won the Investigative Reporting prize "for his reports on how some lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease, resulting in remedial legislative efforts;"
  • John Luther Adams whose "Become Ocean" was awarded the Music prize. The “haunting orchestral work suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels.” (Taiga Press/Theodore Front Musical Literature);
  • Finalists in the National Reporting category John Emshwiller and Jeremy Singer-Vine of The Wall Street Journal who reported on and created a searchable database on "the nation’s often overlooked factories and research centers that once produced nuclear weapons and now pose contamination risks;"
  • Finalist in the History category Eric Schlosser whose book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety" (The Penguin Press), is "a chilling history of the management of America’s nuclear arsenal, exploring the fateful challenges and chronicling the 'near misses' that could have triggered a cataclysm."

For a full list of individuals and publications honored with this award, please see the Pulitzer website.

Topics on the Beat: