COLUMBIA, Mo. — The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes honored five IRE members for a variety of individual work, including local, national and investigative reporting, and non-fiction books. Three members also share the public service honors awarded to The Wall Street Journal.
Brett Blackledge of The Birmingham (Ala.) News won the investigative reporting award for uncovering widespread corruption in Alabama’s community college system.
Debbie Cenziper of The Miami Herald was honored for the “House of Lies” series, detailing how a public agency squandered millions of dollars intended to fund public housing.
Charles Savage of The Boston Globe won the national reporting award for stories on President Bush’s extensive use of “signing statements” that allow him to bypass portions of new laws.
James Bandler, Charles Forelle, and Mark Maremont.share the public service prize awarded to The Wall Street Journal for exposing illegal backdating of stocks given to corporate leaders. Bandler and Forelle also won the 2006 Philip Meyer Award for their use of statistics to support their reporting on suspect transactions.
The non-fiction book prize went to Lawrence Wright’s "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11."
The prize for distinguished book on U.S. history was awarded to “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation" by Gene Roberts and IRE member Hank Klibanoff.
For a complete list of winners and finalists, see www.pulitzer.org.
