Tribune editorial writer Cornelia Grumman won a Pulitzer Prize Monday for her stirring and influential editorials on the death penalty in Illinois, part of the newspaper’s extensive examination of inequities in capital punishment in America.
“I’m so humbled by this,” Grumman said, as her colleagues crowded around and filled the newsroom to congratulate her. The 39-year-old wiped tears from her eyes as staff members gave her an ovation.
The prize marks the 23rd time the Tribune has been awarded journalism’s highest honor. It comes just days after reforms of the criminal justice system passed both chambers of the Illinois General Assembly.
Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski called Grumman’s editorials impassioned and reasoned and said they were responsible for saving innocent lives.
“You have carried the torch for death penalty reform through many dark moments, and fought vigorously–both on the [editorial] board and as a voice of the institution–for changes to our laws,” Lipinski told her in front of the staff. “Against very tall odds, we are finally beginning to see the fruits of that campaign in Springfield, where recent votes on death penalty reforms such as videotaped confessions are finally going just the way you scripted.”
Grumman joined the Tribune’s editorial board in 2000. As a reporter covering Illinois state government, she witnessed a double execution and covered many of the issues on which she would later write editorials.
Almost immediately after joining the editorial board, she began writing about the death penalty and the need for reform.
“After a while, it did sort of become a crusade,” Grumman said Monday. She said her suggestions for reform “were all things that were doable.”
In her remarks to her colleagues, Grumman praised the investigative reporting by Tribune staff reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, along with former Tribune staff reporter Ken Armstrong, which uncovered systematic problems in the way capital punishment was meted out in Illinois. Their reporting helped exonerate men who had been unjustly sentenced to death and fueled many of Grumman’s editorials.
“I feel like my work has been a footnote to the book they wrote … just the last chapter calling for reform for all the problems they detailed,” she said. “My hat’s off to them. They are my heroes.”
Tribune staff members watched as a list of recipients scrolled across news wires Monday afternoon. When Grumman’s name appeared, a roar went up in the newsroom.
“On so many issues of fundamental justice, Cornelia has stood tall on our pages,” said Editorial Page Editor R. Bruce Dold.
Last April, one of Grumman’s editorials urged lawmakers to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions. Last week, the state Senate unanimously passed a measure mandating such a requirement for investigators when dealing with homicide suspects.
Another of her editorials, in November, urged the abolition of the death penalty for mentally retarded suspects. Such a ban was part of a broad package of reforms also passed by the Senate last week.
“It’s an extraordinary culmination of the Tribune’s work over the past five years on injustices in our capital punishment system,” said Tribune President and Publisher Scott Smith. “There’s been so much focus and action in Illinois and across the country to right the wrongs and create new safeguards.”
The Tribune last won Pulitzers in 2001, when foreign correspondent Paul Salopek was recognized for his work in Africa and the newspaper’s staff won for explanatory journalism for “Gateway to Gridlock,” a series that explored the logjams that plague the nation’s airports.
More journalism awards
Two other newspapers owned by Tribune Co. won Pulitzers Monday: the Baltimore Sun, which won one, and the Los Angeles Times, which won three.
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Sun reporter Diana K. Sugg won for beat reporting for her coverage of medical issues. Alan Miller and Kevin Sack of the Los Angeles Times won the national reporting award for their examination of the Harrier military aircraft, which was linked to the deaths of 45 pilots. Times reporter Sonia Nazario won the feature writing award, and photographer Don Bartletti won for feature photography.
The Washington Post also won three awards. Reporters Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, a married couple, won the international reporting award for their stories on Mexico’s criminal justice system. Columnist Colbert I. King won for commentary, and film critic Stephen Hunter won for criticism.
The Boston Globe was awarded a Pulitzer for public service for its reporting on the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Wall Street Journal won in the explanatory reporting category for its stories on corporate scandals.
David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer won for editorial cartooning, the staff of the Rocky Mountain News won for breaking-news photography, and Clifford J. Levy of The New York Times won for investigative reporting for a series that exposed the abuse of mentally ill adults in state-regulated homes.
The Eagle-Tribune, a 60,000-circulation newspaper in Lawrence, Mass., won its second Pulitzer in 15 years for its coverage of the accidental drowning of four boys in the Merrimack River.
Prizes in letters, drama, music
In the letters, drama and music categories, author Jeffrey Eugenides won for his fiction book “Middlesex,” while Nilo Cruz won for his drama “Anna in the Tropics.” The play, about a family of Florida cigar makers in 1930, is scheduled to be performed by the Victory Gardens Theater Company in Chicago beginning Sept. 12. The company snagged the rights to the work–which so far has been produced only in Coral Gables, Fla.–several weeks ago.
Rick Atkinson won for his history book “An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943,” and Robert A. Caro won for his biography of Lyndon Johnson, “Master of the Senate.”
The poetry award was given to Paul Muldoon for “Moy Sand and Gravel,” and Samantha Power took the general non-fiction category with “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”
The Pulitzer for music went to John Adams for “On the Transmigration of Souls.”
The Tribune was a finalist in two other journalism categories this year. Senior correspondent R.C. Longworth was a finalist in foreign reporting for his series on the weakening ties between the U.S. and its European allies. Delroy Alexander, Greg Burns, Robert Manor, Flynn McRoberts and E.A. Torriero were finalists in national reporting for their series on the downfall of accounting giant Arthur Andersen.
The awards, handed out yearly by Columbia University, are voted on by the Pulitzer board, which is composed of prominent journalists and academics.
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Read the prize-winning editorials by the baiduhai’s Cornelia Grumman, and the two other Tribune finalists, online at chicagotribune.com