2/25/08

Roy Harris, a senior editor for Chief Financial Officer (CFO) magazine, said his new book, "Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism," is unique in that while it chronicles the history of the Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service, it also goes behind the scenes to detail the inner workings of newsrooms that have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The Emerson chapter of The Society for Professional Journalists and the Department of Journalism invited Harris Thursday night to discuss his book with the journalism department Leader-in-Residence, Carole Simpson.

Harris is a former Emerson Journalism professor and has had a long career working for publications such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Harris's book chronicles the history of all the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service from 1918 to 2007. He said he wrote the book when he "Realized that no one else had really looked at a public service prize, the one prize every year that goes for public service over ninety years, as a body of work."

Harris said his father, Roy J. Harris, was a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and was involved with four different Pulitzer Prizes.

In 1950 the Post-Dispatch shared the prize with The Chicago Daily News for their joint work in exposing 37 Illinois newspapermen who were found to be on the payroll for the state of Illinois. "It's how I started to get at least toe-deep before getting knee-deep into it," said Harris referring to his interest in the public service prize history. "I come from a family where the Pulitzer Prize tradition is very strong."

Joseph Pulitzer, the man for whom the prizes are named, was a Hungarian immigrant who came to the United States in 1864 and served in the 1st New York Cavalry during the Civil War. After his service, he made his way to St. Louis where he eventually founded the St. Louis Post-Dispatch when he combined his German-language Westliche Post with The Evening Dispatch in 1878 and retained ownership until his death in 1911. In 1883 he purchased the New York World for which he gained widespread notoriety. In his will, he provided $2m to found a school of journalism at Columbia University and to fund the Pulitzer Prizes.

The Pulitzer Prize for public service is awarded to a news organization, and it is considered the top honor of the Pulitzers. According to the Pulitzer website it is awarded "For a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper through the use of its journalistic resources which, as well as reporting, may include editorials, cartoons, photographs and online material."

In 2007, the award was given to Roy Harris's old employer, The Wall Street Journal, for its "creative and comprehensive probe into backdated stock options for business executives that triggered investigations, the ouster of top officials and widespread change in corporate America.'

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