This week, the Village Voice announced it would cease print publication. Though it remains eligible for the Pulitzer Prizes as a digital outlet, the shift marks a moment to revisit the paper’s three prize winners — Mark Schoofs, Teresa Carpenter and Jules Feiffer.
For the first time, Carpenter’s and Feiffer’s work has been made available on Pulitzer.org as part of an ongoing effort to digitize its archives. (All Pulitzer-winning work post 1995 already is online.)
An image from Mark Schoofs' series on AIDS in Africa
“The Voice is an incredible American institution that trained an entire generation of New York journalists,” said Schoofs, now investigations and projects editor at BuzzFeed News, who won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting while on staff at the Voice. “I just feel so lucky to have worked at the Village Voice, and I feel so lucky to have had Richard Goldstein as my editor. I really don’t think my career would have been nearly as interesting if I hadn’t.”
Schoofs’ prize-winning work, available here, addressed the AIDS crisis in Africa. The Pulitzer board called his reporting from countries across the continent, including Nigeria, Kenya, Gabon, Zimbabwe, Uganda and South Africa, “provocative and enlightening.” He noted in a phone interview that good journalism requires cash flow to support the kind of travel and parsing of data that went into his series.
One of Feiffer's prize-winning cartoons
Feiffer was recognized with a Pulitzer in Editorial Cartooning in 1986. His winning portfolio is available here. The subject matter feels highly relevant more than 30 years later, tackling issues such as racism, terrorism and the media.
Feiffer did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but Schoofs said of his colleague: “Jules defined the sensibility of the Voice. When you thought of the Village Voice, you thought of Jules Feiffer.”
Dorothy Stratten
Teresa Carpenter also was not immediately available to comment. Carpenter won the Feature Writing prize in 1981 for “Murder on a Day Pass,” which can be found here. She wrote lyrically of the gruesome murder of a Playboy magazine playmate, Dorothy Stratten, at the hands of her husband, Paul Snider.
The Pulitzer jury said of Carpenter: "This gifted journalist went beyond the surface of a crime in 'Murder on a Day Pass' to deal with tragic weaknesses in our criminal justice and mental-care systems. In clear and concise reporting, she showed how an insane man could declare frequently and publicly that we would kill his wife — and did. Her excellent writing was apparent too in dealing with the killing of a public figure and of a showgirl."
The date of the final print edition of the Voice has yet to be announced.