The Washington Post (File)
The Pulitzers are pleased to announce that most Prize-winning work published by The Washington Post from 1936 onward is now available on Pulitzer.org.
Visual entries — including Herbert Block's 1979 Editorial Cartooning submission and Matthew Lewis's 1975 Feature Photography portfolio — will be photographed from the original scrapbooks as part of a forthcoming initiative. Some longer entries submitted prior to the stipulation of length requirements have been condensed in a curated format.
Following a long ascent that culminated in the investigative triumph of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's coverage of Watergate, The Post emerged as a major national news organization. Viewed through a contemporary prism, the entries now available online offer indelible insights into the political, cultural and social landscapes of an evolving nation.
More recent winning work from the Post — such as this year's Investigative and National Reporting portfolios — is accessible as well. Stay tuned to Pulitzer.org for further additions.
Links to each completed entry are provided below:
Felix Morley (Editorial Writing, 1936): "Selfishness, brutality, moral cowardice and, above all, perhaps, sordid material ambitions; ignorant indifference and shoddy meretricious thinking — all these we can count among our imports. In our hasty, inefficient melting pot they have been made a part of our national destiny. Like a cheap amalgam they cover and obscure the pure metal which went into the formation of America."
Edward T. Folliard (Telegraphic Reporting - National, 1947): "If the really troubled time ever comes, the fault will not lie alone with the Kluxers and the Columbians who fanned the flames. It will be with those of us who did nothing to help put out the fire."
Herbert Elliston (Editorial Writing, 1949): "This newspaper expressed shock and disappointment when, in October, 1946, the George Washington University excluded Negroes from the Lisner Auditorium in conformity with the outmoded pattern established by the National Theater, instead of adopting a new pattern in conformity with its own ideals. Leadership by the university at that time might well have prevented the unhappy impasse in which Washington now finds itself. Later, when the board of trustees rescinded its ban on admission of Negroes, we applauded its decision as 'an action of statesmanship' but expressed regret that the board saw fit to close the auditorium to commercial stage shows. It has a splendid opportunity now to make its declaration of principle effective in a practical way."
Alfred Friendly (International Reporting, 1968): "It may be, therefore, that the present state of affairs in the Middle East will prevail for a long time. Israel surely has the patience and the capacity to endure it and the will to resist any proposals to restore the old situation, whatever the minor improvements, that led to war in June."
Philip L. Geyelin (Editorial Writing, 1970): "This had nothing to do with his background, however much he may now claim humble origins as a fatal handicap. Other Presidents have had a hard early life and Lyndon Johnson governed just fine when things were going his way. What it had to do with was very largely the war, and the way he got so deeply into it, and his own miscalculations about how it could be conducted and how quickly and cheaply won; this is what destroyed his effectiveness in the end, this and the unrest at home which fed on the war and which he had no answer for."
Jim Hoagland (International Reporting, 1971): "The overwhelming impression left on this visitor is melancholy, despite the exuberance of the people. There is in both black and white a Faulknerian sense of despair at being saddled with this crushing burden in an otherwise Elysian setting."
David S. Broder (Commentary, 1973): "This 'equilibrium model,' to give it a fancy name, is something new in our political thinking; it is the doctrine of checks-and-balances carried to a point at which immobility becomes the most desirable characteristic of government. This is a step beyond the ticket-splitting that became so pervasive in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a subtle inclination, on the part of many voters, to employ the ballot box to paralyze the government — so as to minimize the risk of harm from governmental actions."
The Washington Post (Public Service, 1973): "According to Young, Segretti told him that 'I’m just a small fish; there are many others' in the sabotage campaign that federal investigators say was conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by White House aides and officials at the Committee for the Re-election of the President."
Alan M. Kriegsman (Criticism, 1976): "You’d have thought it was a Dylan concert, a Brando comeback, or at the very least, the opening of 'The Godfather, Part III.' But no, the focus of all this clamor and glitter was a ballet performance."
George F. Will (Commentary, 1977): "I hold this truth to be self-evident: With or without oil, people who pour malt whisky on oatmeal are people to be reckoned with."
William McPherson (Criticism, 1977): "Take Archibald MacLeish, the recipient of the Bollingen, a National Book Award, and three Pulitzers, two for poetry and one for a play. Another honor and he’d turn into a bowling trophy, up there on the shelf with all the others. If he were Japanese, he would be designated, now at 84, a National Living Treasure. Being an American, he gets to read to assorted oddballs at the Library of Congress (admission free)."
Meg Greenfield (Editorial Writing, 1978): "We will leave it to others to tote up the pluses and minuses of the Ford administration in strict program and/or policy terms. We can frankly do without reviewing it ourselves. We think it is enough to point out that Gerald Ford had an all but impossible assignment — and that he did a hell of a job."
Loretta Tofani (Local Investigative Specialized Reporting, 1983): "They acted like animals toward me."
Loren Jenkins (International Reporting, 1983): "In the view of many Palestinians, it is one of the sources of their national tragedy that their struggle has been not only against the Israelis, whom they accuse of illegally and violently usurping the land of their ancestors, but also against their fellow Arabs, whom they have alternately had to shame or manipulate for their support."
Charles Krauthammer (Commentary, 1987): "Courage is not to be confused with callousness. Preferring nation over individual was a decision they made with great agony."
Tom Shales (Criticism, 1988): "The Letterman show is infused with a sensibility that is carried over into all details. It's hand-made, not machine-made, TV."
Glenn Frankel (International Reporting, 1989): "For many Israelis, the bloated bureaucracy is at least as great a threat to public morale and Israel's long-term health as the stone throwers of Gaza."
David A. Vise and Steve Coll (Explanatory Journalism, 1990): "When Joseph offered him the Drexel job, Shad was inclined to accept. Eight years had passed since he left Wall Street. It was probably time to go home."
Caryle Murphy (International Reporting, 1991): "By day, Kuwait City feels like the eye of a storm. Its deserted streets are eerily calm and quiet, even as Iraqi troops and missiles continue to move south past the city to Kuwait's border with Saudi Arabia."
Jim Hoagland (Commentary, 1991): "The Nobel Committee's choice of Gorbachev honors its instincts and tradition of helping the politically needy. What it does not do is fully honor those who ended Communist rule in Eastern Europe. For that, there would have to be another name on the prize."
David Maraniss (National Reporting, 1993): "Anyone growing up in Hot Springs has to have a very deep sense of politics from an early age, a sense that money and power control everything. You couldn't grow up here and not understand that. Yet what it did for me, somehow, is make me more of an idealist. Somehow everything I saw here made me want to reform the world. I think Bill came out of Hot Springs with that same sensibility. It is a place of fascinating contradictions."
George Lardner Jr. (Feature Writing, 1993): "This was a crime that could and should have been prevented. I write about it as a sort of cautionary tale, in anger at a system of justice that failed to protect my daughter, a system that is addicted to looking the other way, especially at the evil done to women."
Michael Dirda (Criticism, 1993): "Though Azaro's supernatural journeys may derive mainly from folklore tradition and a taste for French or Francophone surrealism, their schizophrenic quality, complete with voices and visions, also recalls the more extreme novels of Philip K. Dick and even Julian Jaynes's controversial theories about human consciousness."
William Raspberry (Commentary, 1994): "Suppose you ticked off the academic and political accomplishments of the grandchildren of slaves, even while informing him that there were still in America those who were indifferent, even hostile, to the advancement of his people."
Related
Read our obituary of Charles Krauthammer here.
Read an enhanced edition of Edward T. Folliard's "Columbians Cloud Atlanta With an Aura of Nazism" here.