Times wins Pulitzer for series on ocean pollution

Pulitzer administrator Gissler praised The Times' use of "a very sophisticated package of online material," which included video editing by John Vande Wege. In the fifth part of the series, McFarling, who left the paper last year, detailed how increasing acidity portended catastrophic changes for the bottom of the food chain. The project was overseen by Assistant Metro Editor Frank Clifford and Assistant Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin.

The triumph of the Weekly's Gold was notable as a breakthrough not only for a restaurant critic but for an alternative publication that had never before even had a Pulitzer finalist. When the news of Gold's victory came just after noon Monday, Weekly staffers sprayed the 46-year-old food writer with champagne.

Gold began his "Counter Intelligence" column in 1986, continued it during a six-year interlude with The Times in the 1990s and then returned it to the Weekly, where his witty and evocative reviews have been a mainstay for more than a decade.

Fans have described his columns as a joyous and subversive rebuttal to mainstream reviewers, with the critic ranging from a Pasadena gelato cart to a Beverly Hills steakhouse to a Cypress Park taqueria, where last year he found a dish so large and evocatively proportioned that the critic dubbed it "the porno burrito."

Gold said Monday he was happy at the thought that he had opened up new corners of Los Angeles to his readers.

"When I was at The Times, there used to be a joke that huge parts of L.A. only got written about if somebody got shot or I was writing about a restaurant there," he said. "And I would like to think that I helped a little bit to make it feel like the city wasn't so much that way anymore."

Gold won in a category in which two Times writers -- classical music reviewer Mark Swed and art critic Christopher Knight -- were also finalists. The Pulitzer board commended Knight for pieces "that reflect meticulous reporting, aesthetic judgment and authoritative voice." It praised Swed "for his passionate music criticism, marked by resonant writing and an ability to give life to the people behind a performance."

Among the other finalists for the journalism prizes were The Times' Baghdad writers, who won praise for their "courageous chronicling" of the increasingly fractious landscape in Iraq. Cited for their coverage were Bureau Chief Borzou Daragahi and reporters Louise Roug, Megan Stack, Solomon Moore and Shamil Aziz.

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