Roberts, Klibanoff win Pulitzer in history

The Race Beat

, a masterfully researched account of civil-rights-era journalism by Gene Roberts, former executive editor of The Inquirer, and Hank Klibanoff, a former Inquirer deputy managing editor who is now a top editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has won the Pulitzer Prize for history, the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University announced yesterday in presenting its annual awards in arts, letters and journalism.

Subtitled The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (Alfred A. Knopf), the Roberts/Klibanoff book took its two coauthors almost 15 years to complete.

The history prize, which is restricted to books dealing with "the history of the United States," normally goes to noted academics in the field, such as C. Vann Woodward and Bernard Bailyn. It is unusual, though not unprecedented, for it to go to a history by journalists. Earlier journalist/authors who have won the prize include Stanley Karnow in 1990 for In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines, and Rick Atkinson in 2003 for The Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-43.

Klibanoff, asked how it felt to suddenly be a historian as well as a journalist, laughed and said, "I felt like I was one as I was digging through the archival material and previously unseen letters. . . . It also made me feel regret that I didn't pay more attention to history in school."

Klibanoff expressed special pleasure that Roberts, a longtime mentor whose staff won 17 Pulitzer Prizes at The Inquirer during his 18-year tenure, had been recognized.

"As many Pulitzer Prizes as he is responsible for," Klibanoff said of Roberts, "this is the first one that has his name on it."

Roberts, also a former managing editor of the New York Times and former chairman of the Pulitzer Board, taught his normal Monday afternoon journalism seminar yesterday at the University of Maryland, when all the hubbub about the Pulitzers was breaking.

Students greeted him with a cake. In return, Roberts said afterward, "I let them out an hour early."

Asked also how he felt about his new historian status, Roberts said, "Great - I always was half a frustrated historian anyway." Noting that universities and journalism schools are already beginning to adopt The Race Beat, he voiced hope that the prize would add to its "shelf life."

In the other book prizes, Cormac McCarthy won for fiction for his novel The Road. Lawrence Wright won in nonfiction for The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

Natasha Trethewey won the poetry prize for Native Guard. Debby Applegate won in biography for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Three of the book prizes went to the same New York-based publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf.

In other arts, Ornette Coleman took the music prize for his CD Sound Grammar, and David Lindsay-Abaire received the drama award for his play Rabbit Hole.

In the journalism awards, the biggest winner - a shift from recent years when a single paper sometimes won three or four - was the Wall Street Journal, with two. The board gave the Journal its public service award, citing the paper for its "creative and comprehensive probe" into Wall Street's stock options scandal. The Journal's staff took the international reporting prize for "sharply edged reports on the adverse impact of China's booming capitalism" upon Chinese society.

The Oregonian in Portland won the breaking news prize for coverage of a family lost in the Oregon mountains during a blizzard. Kenneth R. Weiss, Usha Lee McFarling and Rick Loomis of the Los Angeles Times won in explanatory reporting for "richly portrayed" articles on the world's troubled oceans.

Jonathan Gold won the criticism prize for his "zestful, wide ranging" restaurant reviews in the LA Weekly. Gold is the first restaurant critic ever to win the award, given several times by the board in recent years to writers in cultural areas not previously recognized, such as car coverage and fashion.

Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution won the commentary prize for her "courageous, clear-headed" columns. The New York Daily News won the editorial-writing prize for "compassionate and compelling" editorials that supported ground zero workers suffering from health problems. Walt Handelsman of Newsday took the prize for his "stark, sophisticated" editorial cartooning.

In photography, Oded Balilty of the Associated Press won for breaking news photography with a shot of a Jewish woman resisting Israeli Defense Forces soldiers as they removed settlers from the West Bank. The Inquirer's Michael Bryant was a finalist in this category for his "poignant photographs of the devastating injury" to the racehorse Barbaro - he was the only photographer who captured the precise moment of the injury. Renee C. Byer of the Sacramento Bee won in feature photography for her photos of a single mother and her young son who was losing a battle with cancer.

Brett Blackledge of the Birmingham (Ala.) News won for investigative reporting for exposing "cronyism and corruption" in Alabama's community college system. Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe won for national reporting for stories revealing how President Bush often uses "signing statements" to bypass unliked provisions of new laws.

Debbie Cenziper of the Miami Herald won in local reporting for coverage of "waste, favoritism and lack of oversight" at a Miami housing agency. Andrea Elliott of the New York Times won for feature writing for her "intimate, richly textured" portrait of an immigrant imam.

The Pulitzer Board also bestowed special citations this year on the science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury for his "deeply influential career," and the late jazz composer and musician John Coltrane for his "supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz."

In an extremely unusual announcement, the board updated its 1980 prize for spot news photography to make clear that it properly belongs to Jahangir Razmi, an Iranian photographer, for his photo of a firing squad in Iran that ran anonymously around the world in 1979. Razmi's identity, long hidden for security reasons, was revealed only last year.

Winners in every Pulitzer category except public service receive a $10,000 cash award and a certificate. The public service winner is awarded a gold medal.

On the Net: http://www.pulitzer.org.