"I worry that some papers are really chipping away at this kind of good, investigative journalism," said McCaskill, a member of the Armed Services Committee, which reviewed the hospital's shortcomings. "It keeps us honest. It keeps our democracy honest. And, in this case, it protected literally hundreds of good, patriotic Americans who obviously deserved a lot, lot better."
The Post won the national reporting prize for its four-part series about how Cheney has wielded power and policy influence like no previous vice president.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, April 09, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 37 words Type of Material: Correction
Pulitzer Prizes: A photograph in Section A on Tuesday that accompanied an article announcing winners of the 92nd Pulitzer Prizes identified Leonard Downie Jr. as managing editor of the Washington Post. Downie is the newspaper's executive editor.
Reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker spent a year and interviewed more than 200 people in their research on Cheney.
Gellman said Monday that the Cheney story was such a "tough nut to crack" that he had ducked it for some time and worried that months of reporting might lead to nothing.
A breakthrough came one day when three key interviews helped confirm how Cheney slipped a proposal for military commissions through the White House bureaucracy to Bush for his signature, with little review by others.
In a decidedly more whimsical vein, the Post's Gene Weingarten won the feature writing award for his account of violinist Joshua Bell's encounter with the masses commuting through the Metro station at L'Enfant Plaza.
Weingarten asked: "In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?" It did not. Hundreds of commuters paid little heed to Bell's soaring artistry.
The Post's three other Pulitzers were: for breaking news reporting, for its "multifaceted coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech," told with numerous online updates; for foreign reporting, for Steve Fainaru's accounts showing how private security contractors in Iraq operate outside most laws governing U.S. forces; and for commentary, for Steven Pearlstein's "insightful columns that explore the nation's complex economic ills with masterful clarity."
The investigative reporting prize was shared by the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune for stories that led to substantial policy changes. The Times story exposed how medicine and other imports from China included toxic ingredients. The Tribune investigation showed poor government regulation of toys, car seats and cribs, and led to a recall of hazardous products.
The Boston Globe's Mark Feeney won the criticism award for his review of a range of arts, from painting to film; the breaking news photography award went to Adrees Latif of Reuters for his picture of a Japanese videographer fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar.
