Finalist: The Wall Street Journal , by Staff
For its highly detailed coverage of the collapse of America's financial system, explicating key decisions, capturing the sense of calamity and charting the human toll.
Winners
Prize Winner in National Reporting in 2009:
Staff
For "PolitiFact," its fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters. (Moved by the Board to the National Reporting category.)
National Reporting
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in National Reporting in 2009:
Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest
For their relentless exploration of America's network of immigration detention centers, melding reporting and computer analysis to expose sometimes deadly abuses and spur corrective steps.
John Shiffman, John Sullivan and Tom Avril
For their exhaustive reports on how political interests have eroded the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency and placed the nation's environment in greater jeopardy, setting the stage for remedial action.
The Jury
The Jury
Alix Freedman(chair )*
deputy managing editor
Margaret Wolf Freivogel
editor
Everett Mitchell
executive editor
Bill Nichols
managing editor
Brian Toolan
business editor
Winners in National Reporting
Jo Becker and Barton Gellman
For their lucid exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful yet sometimes disguised influence on national policy.
Charlie Savage
For his revelations that President Bush often used "signing statements" to assert his controversial right to bypass provisions of new laws.
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau
For their carefully sourced stories on secret domestic eavesdropping that stirred a national debate on the boundary line between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberty.
Walt Bogdanich
For his heavily documented stories about the corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings.
2009 Prize Winners
Patrick Farrell
For his provocative, impeccably composed images of despair after Hurricane Ike and other lethal storms caused a humanitarian disaster in Haiti.
W.S. Merwin
A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.
Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon
For the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.
Staff
For its swift and sweeping coverage of a sex scandal that resulted in the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, breaking the story on its Web site and then developing it with authoritative, rapid-fire reports.