Feeney wins Pulitzer!

Mark Feeney, a Massachusetts native who began working at the Boston Globe shortly after he graduated from Harvard in 1979, today was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Hooray! The prize couldn't have gone to a more deserving (or modest) person. The guy is a public intellectual and gentleman of the old school, to boot.

The author of "Nixon at the Movies'' (2004), a fascinating critical analysis of the movies that Richard Nixon screened at the White House during his presidency, Feeney won the prize for 10 critical essays on visual culture. According to the Globe's item on the award, in 2007 Feeney

wrote of the "unheroic loneliness of everyday people'' reflected in the paintings of Edward Hopper, the "pure visual kapow'' of aerial photos by Bradford Washburn and Frank Gohlke, the collision between art and celebrity in the work of photographer Annie Leibovitz, the artistic trajectory traveled by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, and the sense of community in the work of photographer Charles (Teenie) Harris.

When I was producing multimedia features for the Globe's Living/Arts section, Feeney (along with Susan Vermazen, the section's photo editor) was an inspiring collaborator. Check out this video, for example:

Also, take a peek at this audio slideshow about Leonard Bernstein's Boston years.

Congratulations, Mark!

PS: Beth Daley, an environmental reporter for the Globe, was one of three finalists in the Pulitzer's explanatory reporting category for her really terrific series on global warming.