[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
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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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