Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism

Pulitzer’s Gold is the first book to trace the ninety-year history of the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded annually to a newspaper rather than to individuals. Harris recalls dozens of “stories behind the stories,” often allowing the journalists involved to share their own accounts. Readers will recognize some of the stories, like the New York Times’s Pentagon Papers exclusive and the Watergate scandal that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein dug out for the Washington Post.But Harris takes his Gold Medal saga through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights struggle, and the Vietnam era before bringing public-service journalism into today’s age of environmental and corporate exposés. Story after story illustrates how for small town papers or metropolitan dailies alike, public-service reporting is a point of pride for the American press.