Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism

19. The Nature of Things

          The Nature of Things . . . “The Environment Story” is bigger and more important than ever, and it will only grow more so in years to come. [Journalists] recognize professional challenges in cracking the complexity of environmental issues, overcoming the pitfalls of fragmented reporting, and making important concerns more audience friendly. —From the Strategic Plan of the Society of Environmental Journalists, founded  ftories dealing with environmental issues and the natural sciences—or, in two cases, nature’s fury—dominated Public Service Prize–winners in the s. Still, the business story was here to stay, and much of the coverage that was honored continued to have a corporate flavor. For one thing, reporters examined more closely the environmental approach that industry and governmental agencies took. On a smaller scale, newspapers were facing up to a problem with their own internal environment: office air pollution. As regulations spread from state to state, publishers gradually banned that ancient crutch of deadline writers and editors everywhere : smoking. Suddenly, newsrooms were not only quiet but also cigarette-, cigar-, and pipe-free—an amazing contrast for anyone who had known the smoky news offices of the s or s. Of course, the same rules applied to every business , not just journalism. But the change particularly shocked reporters, many of whom were convinced that nicotine and caffeine were every bit as important as newsprint and ink to getting the paper out each day. (It will be left, perhaps, to the next generation to witness ink and paper vanish as necessary elements of the daily press.) Somehow, though, newspapers managed to continue turning out great jour-  nalism in the twentieth century’s last decade, even if the newsroom tab for coffee skyrocketed. Blood and Water The  Pulitzer board picked both the mighty Philadelphia Inquirer and North Carolina’s tiny Washington Daily News as Gold Medal winners, the first time in twenty-three years that more than a single Public Service Prize was awarded. One winning story involved the business of water, the other the business of blood. But both had the simplest of origins. For the family-owned Washington Daily News, which claimed its first Pulitzer Prize, it started with the editor puzzling over the small print on his residential water bill. For the Inquirer, continuing its long string of Pulitzers under Gene Roberts, the genesis was a reporter’s pensive moment during a Red Cross blood drive in the office. In Washington, North Carolina, Bill Coughlin noted a new statement on his water bill. It said that the city was testing for chemicals in the water system. As editor of the ,-circulation Daily News, he asked one of the paper’s four reporters, Betty Gray, to look into it. Her digging turned up forty-two chemicals in the water , each of which she discussed with state and private toxicologists. One chemical , she was told, was a carcinogen far in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe level. She then obtained memos showing that the state environmental agency knew the city’s water was contaminated. Gray built her knowledge to prepare for an interview with the city manager, which came on the morning of Wednesday, September . (An afternoon paper, the Daily News had a noon deadline.) She learned that the federal act eliminating unsafe drinking water did not cover communities with populations of less than ten thousand, like the Daily News’s city of Washington. Actually, it turned out, there were fifty-six thousand water treatment plants in the United States that were unprotected by the EPA. After a few minutes with the reporter the city manager interrupted the interview , promising to get back to her in time for her deadline. He then rushed to the newspaper with a legal notice that described the town’s water as having “levels of certain chemicals which exceeded EPA recommendations.”The notice was too late to run, but it became part of Gray’s front-page story for that day. Gray later confirmed that the city’s knowledge of carcinogens in the water went back eight years, but that there had been no regulations requiring a mayor, city manager, the state, or the EPA to inform the public. Next Wednesday, the paper ran a report on a second cancer-causing chemical that was combining with the first to increase hazards so severely that the water                      plant might have to close. As the coverage continued, the mayor complained that the city...