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Vol. 21, No.4/Summer 1999

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Prize-winners and others

By Catherine Kitchell

In recent months, there has been much written on prize-winning librarians both in print and on the listserv but the following is, I hope, a complete listing of the accomplishments of some of the News Division members. If I have missed anyone, please let me know and to those who sent me other examples of great research stories, don't worry, I am working on the next issue as you read this. Please continue to send me stories of great research projects you have worked on. I love this stuff!

Sandy Csizmar, Senior Information Specialist at The Hartford Courant, was given credit on the stories that won her paper a Pulitzer for Breaking News. The stories were about a disgruntled employee at Connecticut's Lottery Headquarters who shot four top employees before killing himself. Sandy was given credit for tracking down old yearbook photos of the shooter. The entire library staff developed timelines of similar incidents, got background on stress in the workplace and ran AutoTrack searches on the shooter and victims to get comments from neighbors and friends. Librarian Sandy Melhorn was also credited on some of the stories.

Barbara Hijek at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale worked with John Maines, CAR guru at the Sun-Sentinel, on the series "Cosmetic Surgery: The Hidden Dangers" which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and won the 1999 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. The series showed that 34 people had died after seemingly routine plastic surgery since 1986 (13 deaths since 1997) and prompted Florida's Board of Medicine to pass new rules tightening safety procedures for office cosmetic surgery. Barbara helped with the computer files provided by the Florida Department of Professional Regulation, provided background on doctors and patients and also helped mine the court system for the series.

Liz Donovan, Miami Herald research editor, was part of her paper's 22-person effort that won the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting. The series, "Dirty Votes: The Race for Miami Mayor," prompted the courts to nullify Xavier Suarez's 1997 victory and appoint Joe Carollo as mayor. It was the sixteenth Pulitzer for the Herald. Liz contributed by getting access to public records, training other staff members on AutoTrack and getting systems to get their Intranet working so they could load searchable databases for other staff members. The series also won the prestigious Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting which comes with $25,000. The article in the Herald announcing the prize notes that computer analysis was crucial to the project but also states it relied on "old-fashioned shoe leather reporting."

The North Carolina Press Association presented a first place award in business writing to David Raynor of the Raleigh News and Observer's News Research Department. David worked on a series about tobacco allotment holders. Allotments are licenses issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to certain farms. Each farm is allotted a specific amount of tobacco to sell. Researchers found that many licenses were leased to farms in North Carolina when the owners lived outside the state.

And let us not forget Margot Williams and Alice Crites of The Washington Post. The series, "Deadly Force," detailed police shootings in Washington and won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Margot worked on a database detailing all the court cases involving police shootings. Margot tracked down over 400 cases from the courts and entered relevant information from each case in a database. Much of that information was cross-checked with FBI and police department records detailing all police homicides and police shootings. Interestingly, the police department maintains records on every discharge of police weapons, even if the discharge did not involve a homicide. Unfortunately, both Alice and Margot missed the Pulitzer luncheon in New York City.

Alice Crites and Margot Williams at the US Airways gate in the airport

Their plane was grounded due to bad weather at National Airport (okay, okay, Reagan Airport) on April 12. Margot reports, however, that her sister, Ann Wyrick from Red Hook, NY, did make the event and took over 2 hours to retell every incident from the luncheon! Not quite the same, but one can tell the reporter instinct runs in families! Maybe, someday, the gene will be identified.

 

Catherine Kitchell works at the Bureau of National Affairs. Her email is ckitchell@bna.com.

 

 


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