Los Angeles Times wins 5 Pulitzer Prizes

The resurgent Los Angeles Times dominated journalism's most prestigious awards yesterday, winning Pulitzer Prizes in five categories ranging from feature photography to national reporting.

"It's especially gratifying because it cuts across all departments of the paper," the Times editor, John Carroll, said in an interview. "The national conversation about important subjects . . . tends to be a conversation along the East Coast. We think it would be a good idea to have more voices, including one from the West. We are trying to be a paper that is interesting enough and credible enough not to be overlooked."

The Wall Street Journal won two prizes, one in explanatory reporting, for Kevin Helliker's and Thomas M. Burton's examination of aneurysms, and another in beat reporting, for Daniel Golden's coverage of college admissions preferences for children of alumni and donors.

Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post took honors in the international reporting category, for his coverage of the impact of the war to topple Saddam Hussein on the lives of Iraqi citizens.

A columnist for The Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts Jr., won in the commentary category, and Matt Davies of The Journal News in White Plains, N. Y., took the editorial cartooning prize. The Pulitzer in breaking-news photography went to The Dallas Morning News, for David Leeson's and Cheryl Diaz Meyer's coverage of the war in Iraq.

David Barstow and Lowell Bergman of The New York Times won the public service Pulitzer for their reporting on death, injuries, and safety hazards in the American workplace. Bergman, who also works for the "Frontline" documentary series, produced by Boston's WGBH-TV (Channel 2), may be best known as the "60 Minutes" producer portrayed by Al Pacino in the 1999 film "The Insider."

Columbia University, which administers the Pulitzers, announced that no award had been conferred for feature writing, for the first time since that category was created in 1979.

The Pulitzer administrator, Sig Gissler, said the board "does not go into discussing its decisions in any significant detail," but added that none of the three final entries had "achieved a majority of the members voting . . . after extensive deliberations."

The Boston Globe's Patricia Wen was a feature writing finalist for her series on a mother's wrenching decision to relinquish her parental rights. Ellen Barry, who now works for the Los Angeles Times, was the Globe's other finalist, in the beat reporting category, for her coverage of neglected people suffering from mental health problems.

Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss, and Joe Mahr of The Blade of Toledo were given the investigative reporting Pulitzer for unearthing Vietnam War atrocities committed by an elite Army Platoon called Tiger Force. The Blade's executive editor, Ron Royhab, said the team had spent about eight months researching the series.

"We felt we had an incredible story here," he said. "All the things you and I believe in journalism all came together. Nobody really acknowledged any existence of [the atrocities] including historians of the Vietnam War."

The winners in the arts and literature fields included Edward P. Jones in fiction for "The Known World," and Doug Wright in drama for his play "I Am My Own Wife." The award in the history category went to Steven Hahn for "A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration," and the biography winner was William Taubman for "Khrushchev: The Man and His Era."

Anne Applebaum won in general nonfiction for "Gulag: A History," and Franz Wright's "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" captured the prize for poetry. The music honor went to Paul Moravec for "Tempest Fantasy," which premiered last May at the Morgan Library in New York City.

By far, the day's biggest winner was the Los Angeles Times, whose five Pulitzers were second only to The New York Times's seven prizes in 2002, most of which were won for Sept. 11-related coverage.

The Los Angeles Times won in breaking news for its coverage of California wildfires, in national reporting for its examination of the Wal-Mart phenomenon, in editorial writing for William Stall's work analyzing California state government, in feature photography for Carolyn Cole's photos of the civil war in Liberia, and in criticism for Dan Neil's automobile reviews.

Neil, who arrived at the Times last year, said automobiles "say a lot about us, and they're a central object in our society in a lot of ways. The fact that we drive these big gas-guzzling cars, it's indicative of a selfishness and a kind of short-sightedness."

Carroll, who went to the Times four years ago after editing The Sun of Baltimore in the 1990s, was recently given the American Society of Newspaper Editors annual Leadership Award. Yesterday he talked about changes in the culture of a paper that had been rocked by an ethics fiasco in 1999 and then by a sale from Times Mirror to the Tribune Co. that led to an upheaval among the executive staff.

"There were problems toward the end of Times Mirror ownership," Carroll said. "We're trying to build something here. . . . We've tried to make it a good place to work, a place where people didn't have to worry about office politics."