[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 60 (Thursday, April 23, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E950-E951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     ST. PETERSBURG TIMES EARNS TWO PULITZER PRIZES FOR JOURNALISM

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. C. W. BILL YOUNG

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 23, 2009

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Speaker, The St. Petersburg Times earned 
a rare honor Monday by collecting multiple Pulitzer Prizes for 
journalism excellence.
  Washington Bureau Chief Bill Adair and his team won the only Pulitzer 
Prize awarded this year by Columbia University for content created for 
the web. They earned the honor in the National Reporting category for 
PolitiFact, a website at www.politifact.com conceived by Bill Adair to 
test the validity of political statements.
  Times Staff Writer Lane DeGregory won the second Pulitzer Prize for 
Feature Writing for her story ``The Girl in the Window'', which is 
about a Plant City child who was locked in her room by her adoptive 
parents.
  This is a great honor for Paul Tash, the Editor, Chairman, and Chief 
Executive Officer of The St. Petersburg Times and his team of writers, 
editors, and support staff in this the newspaper's 125th year.
  Madam Speaker, following my remarks, I will include for the benefit 
of my colleagues a story from the Times by Stephen Nohlgren with more 
background on these awards and the six Pulitzer Prizes earned 
previously by St. Petersburg Times reporters and editors.
  The creation of PolitiFact will be of special interest to our 
colleagues in the House. The PolitiFact team, led by Bill Adair, 
included editors Scott Montgomery and Amy Hollyfield, reporter and 
researcher Angie Drobnic Holan, reporters Robert Farley and Alexander 
Lane, news technologist Matthew Waite and designer Martin Frobisher.
  Together they searched through political ads, speeches and debates 
and determined the accuracy of political statements by presidential 
candidates and candidates for other offices. The information is 
accessible and searchable on the internet and is also published in the 
Times. PolitiFact became such a valuable source of information during 
last fall's campaign season that it was quoted regularly by national 
news organizations.
  Madam Speaker, Please join me in congratulating Lane DeGregory, Bill 
Adair, and his team for a job well done in earning journalism's highest 
honor this week. They have set the standard for human interest and 
political reporting as judged by the peers in their field of work.

             [From the St. Petersburg Times, Apr. 21, 2009]

                         Times Wins 2 Pulitzers

    (By Stephen Nohlgren), The St. Petersburg Times, April 21, 2009

       For the first time in its 125-year history, the St. 
     Petersburg Times has won two Pulitzer Prizes in a single 
     year.
       Staff writer Lane DeGregory, 42, captured the feature 
     writing category for ``The Girl in the Window,'' a moving 
     account of a Plant City child whose mother kept her locked in 
     a filthy room, and the adoptive family who worked to overcome 
     her feral beginnings.
       The Times staff won the national reporting prize for 
     PolitiFact, a Web site, database and ``Truth-O-Meter'' that 
     tests the validity of political statements.
       That award reflected the growing influence of online media 
     in public affairs. PolitiFact was designed for the Web at 
     politifact.com, though its content also appears regularly in 
     the Times' print edition.
       The two awards are ``so representative of our organization 
     as a team, of the skill we bring to work every day,'' 
     Executive Editor Neil Brown told the newsroom staff Monday 
     amid cheers and popping champagne corks.
       Like newspapers all over the country, the Times is 
     navigating tough economic times, Brown said, but ``this is 
     old-fashioned journalism, great reporting and great writing.

[[Page E951]]

     Nothing has changed about that. This is what we do.''
       The Pulitzers, awarded by Columbia University, are widely 
     regarded as journalism's highest accolade. The only other 
     newspaper to win more than one prize in this year's 14 
     categories was the New York Times, with five.
       The St. Petersburg Times previously had won six Pulitzers, 
     its most recent coming in 1998.
       Though Columbia tries to keep results under wraps until one 
     nationwide announcement, reporters and secrets don't mix 
     well.
       By lunchtime Monday, grins, hugs and excited whispers 
     spread through the newsroom. A few minutes before the 3 p.m. 
     announcement, staffers congregated around one computer to 
     await the Associated Press bulletin together.
       After congratulations died down, DeGregory told her 
     colleagues she was working at the Virginian-Pilot 10 years 
     ago, when she read ``Angels & Demons,'' a Pulitzer-winning 
     series by then-Times reporter Thomas French about the murders 
     of an Ohio woman and her two daughters in Florida.
       ``I thought, `Oh my God, there's a newspaper that publishes 
     real stories like that?' ''
       When she was hired at the Times in 2000, DeGregory said, 
     ``I thought it couldn't get any better than working at this 
     place and working with these people. But today it got a 
     little better.''
       ``The Girl in the Window'' was published last August, with 
     photos by Melissa Lyttle.
       Danielle was 7 when neighbors spotted her face through a 
     broken window of her home. Detectives found her in diapers, 
     her skeletal body raw from bug bites.
       She couldn't speak.
       A Fort Myers family adopted her, and DeGregory chronicled 
     their efforts to draw her from her silent shell.
       Within a month of publication, more than 1 million people 
     read the story online. Calls to authorities from Tampa Bay 
     residents wanting to adopt foster children jumped 33 percent.
       Times staff writer John Barry was a Pulitzer finalist in 
     the feature category for ``Winter's Tale,'' an account of a 
     dolphin with a prosthetic tail and a disabled girl who 
     befriended it.
       PolitiFact was conceived by Washington bureau chief Bill 
     Adair during the runup to the 2008 presidential election.
       Adair, 47, felt frustrated in earlier campaigns by a lack 
     of time and resources to fact-check political rhetoric.
       ``We had neglected this aspect of reporting too long,'' 
     said Adair, a 20-year Times veteran. ``With the Web, we had 
     the tools to do reporting better and the tools to be able to 
     publish in new ways.''
       With the green light from Times' brass, Adair skipped 
     traditional campaign coverage and worked full time on 
     PolitiFact.
       The PolitiFact team included editors Scott Montgomery and 
     Amy Hollyfield, reporter and researcher Angie Drobnic Holan, 
     reporters Robert Farley and Alexander Lane, news technologist 
     Matthew Waite and designer Martin Frobisher.
       The team combed through political ads, speeches and 
     debates, and summarized the findings on a ``Truth-O-Meter,'' 
     which labeled statements as True, Mostly True, Half True, 
     Barely True, False or Pants on Fire.
       A searchable database kept the rulings accessible.
       Soon other media outlets were quoting PolitiFact as an 
     authority on public discourse, and Adair was appearing on CNN 
     and National Public Radio.
       About 95 percent of the Web site's hits come from outside 
     the Tampa Bay area and 10 percent from outside the United 
     States.
       ``This is such a terrible time for newspapers, and I think 
     our winning today is a sign that the Web is not a death 
     sentence for newspapers,'' Adair said. ``We need to look at 
     it as an opportunity.''
       For the first time this year, the Pulitzer board invited 
     entries in all categories from Web-only news operations. The 
     Times won the only prize for content created for the Web.
       Editor, chairman and CEO Paul Tash capped off Monday's 
     newsroom toasts by recalling longtime owner Nelson Poynter, 
     who willed the Times to a not-for-profit journalism institute 
     so that public service, not profits, would drive the 
     newspaper's corporate culture.
       ``Here's to a little guy, in a bow tie, who came from 
     Indiana,'' Tash said. ``He gave us the chance, and today our 
     colleagues have vindicated his confidence.''
       Pulitzer Prizes at the St. Petersburg Times and Evening 
     Independent
       1998: Thomas French, feature writing, for ``Angels & 
     Demons,'' his narrative portrait of an Ohio mother and two 
     daughters slain on a Florida vacation, and the three-year 
     inquiry into their murders.
       1995: Jeffrey Good, editorial writing, for ``Final 
     Indignities,'' his editorial campaign urging reform of 
     Florida's probate system for settling estates.
       1991: Sheryl James, feature writing, for ``A Gift 
     Abandoned,'' a series about a mother who abandoned her 
     newborn child and how it affected her life and the lives of 
     others.
       1985: Lucy Morgan and Jack Reed, investigative reporting, 
     for their reporting on Pasco County Sheriff John Short, which 
     revealed his department's troubles and led to his removal 
     from office by voters.
       1980: Bette Swenson Orsini and Charles Stafford, national 
     reporting, for their investigation of the Church of 
     Scientology.
       1964: Times staff, public service, for the investigation of 
     the Florida Turnpike Authority, which disclosed widespread 
     illegal acts and resulted in a major reorganization of the 
     state's road construction program.

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