The five Pulitzer Prize jurors in the Public Service competition made two piles. One consisted of 20-some entries on the general theme of violence against children. At the top of this stack was “Killing Our Children” from the Chicago Tribune.
Rumors fly in the newspaper business around Pulitzer time, and inside the Tribune newsroom rumor had it that the Tribune would win a Pulitzer in Public Service for “Killing Our Children.” It didn’t, but the paper didn’t come away with nothing. The board diplomatically spread the wealth. Welsome won in National Reporting, Akron in Public Service, and the Tribune’s R. Bruce Dold in Editorial Writing for ten editorials he wrote in the course of the Tribune series.
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Dold graciously acknowledged “piggybacking” on “Killing Our Children.” The Tribune’s second Pulitzer was for work that did more than that. Ronald Kotulak, one of the paper’s collection of superb science reporters, triumphed in Explanatory Journalism for “Unlocking the mind,” articles on the human brain. Kotulak ranged widely, but one of his subjects was the indelible damage that can be done by a dismal childhood.
Jane Daugherty of the Detroit Free Press was a finalist in Commentary for her “Children First” columns; free-lancer Kevin Carter received the Pulitzer in Feature Photography and was a finalist in Spot Photography for a picture of a starving Sudanese girl and a waiting vulture; and Lynn Johnston was a finalist in Editorial Cartooning for a sequence in the comic strip For Better or for Worse about a teenager disclosing his homosexuality.
Under these circumstances, the Tribune coup in seizing Parade magazine from the Sun-Times, where it’s been lodged since 1941, is an act of preemptive aggression. The Tribune doesn’t need Parade, won’t be made better by it, and scarcely pretends otherwise. The canned comment from Tribune CEO Jack Fuller put it this way: “Parade’s emphasis on international and national celebrity features complements the Chicago Tribune Magazine’s focus on the heartland of America’s Midwest.”
USA Weekend is already carried by the Daily Southtown, Daily Herald, Northwest Herald, and Copley papers in Aurora, Elgin, Waukegan, and Joliet. None of these papers owns territorial rights, but Chuck Gabrielson, USA Weekend’s vice president in charge of newspaper relations, says he won’t let two papers in one city carry the supplement. Gabrielson also says his paper is loyal to its clients. In this case he’s speaking of clients who gave USA Weekend a presence in the Chicago area after the Tribune briefly carried it on Fridays in the mid-80s, then dropped it.
Gang Warfare
Two weeks ago we wrote that the Sun-Times beat the Tribune silly covering the “outbreak of gang warfare at the Robert Taylor Homes.” Then we heard from Tribune reporter Bill Recktenwald, who’s convinced us to second-guess our yardstick. Recktenwald argues the mayhem inside the project the weekend of March 26 and 27 was less than it was made out to be–lots of gunfire, lots of hell-raising, but no injuries–while on the streets beyond, pitched gang battles were waged and eight teenagers died. If we’d considered the Tribune’s general coverage of all that–including a page-one article on Monday and the lead story in Chicagoland on Tuesday–we couldn’t have called the coverage so deficient.
