CORRECTION appended below.
The formalities of the 2006 Pulitzer season end today with the awarding of prizes at a luncheon at Columbia University in New York. Four of the prizes will go to The Washington Post. Poynter Online asked the Post's winners what will stick with them after they've picked up their plaques.
Responses are posted below from James Grimaldi, who shared the investigative award with Post colleagues Susan Schmidt and R. Jeffrey Smith for their work on uncovering the Jack Abramoff scandal; Jeff Leen, one of the editors on the stories that won the investigative prize; Robin Givhan, Post fashion editor, who won for criticism; and David Finkel, who won for explanatory journalism in his coverage of democracy in Yemen.
You'll find links to the winning stories, along with background on the winners, in the accompanying sidebar.
What are one or two things that you learned about journalism in the course of your prize-winning work that you intend to make better use of going forward?
JAMES GRIMALDI:
Obviously on a story like this, you bring your experience from past investigations -- and that experience was invaluable on this intricate and complicated story. ... A few technical/organizational things come to mind that helped sharpen the means for approaching complex investigations.
One was the use of a wiki page to share information. I've used various systems in the past -- mainframe computing software, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Word in networked computers -- but this was the best, most scalable, searchable, flexible and secure software I've used to store and organize notes, timelines and interviews.
Another is social network analysis, which at the
Post includes the use of social-networking software called "Analyst's Notebook," used to track connections between people, companies, agencies and entities. Social network analysis is a hot topic among some investigative reporters, one that I first learned about from
Brant Houston, director of
Investigative Reporters and Editors -- I'm on the
IRE board. Five or six years ago, Brant had his laptop out during an IRE annual conference and he showed me
social-network analysis software. It was mind-blowing. It is a powerful tool often used by journalists -- and counter-terrorism experts -- to track terrorist cells.
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You'll find the Post's winning stories and background on the journalists via Pulitzer.org:
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There's nothing new about social-network analysis -- reporters have been charting connections between power players forever. The software is a new and disciplined way of thinking about social-network analysis and it deeply affected my approach to this story. When I joined the story in late 2004/early 2005, I had just finished working with Sarah Cohen and Thomas Edsall on a
yearlong look at the Bush Pioneers fundraising network, as well as Democratic fundraisers. A keystone of that project was a memorable
interactive graphic that Sarah took the lead on.
Our work on that project heavily influenced my approach to the Abramoff story. Every story was accompanied by a graphic to illustrate the complicated Abramoff schemes. While I did not use the fancy software for all these graphics (I dummied most of them with pencil and paper), social-network analysis was the inspiration. I spent weeks thinking about how to draft them. [There was] nearly a
full-page graphic that accompanied our October story on how Abramoff killed an anti-gambling bill in Congress. [This
graphic] also ran with our story on the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff. (All of the Abramoff stories can be found at
www.washingtonpost.com/abramoff).
ROBIN GIVHAN:
I suppose the biggest lesson has been not to be swayed by the obvious and to try and step back from the conventional wisdom. Much of what I've written about is unconventional when it comes to fashion coverage. Instead of writing about the things that I thought were important to the industry, I tried to think about the things I felt were important or interesting or on the radar of the reader. Since I cover a particularly insular beat, I think it's easy to write for insiders and I constantly try to keep an arm's distance.
JEFF LEEN: One or two things I learned about journalism to take going forward:
Fortune favors the bold. Be very bold in terms of strategy, and very cautious in terms of tactics. The bold pursuit of big investigative questions led us to exclusive stories about the
SunCruz Casino deal, the
eLottery deal,
Rep. Bob Ney and the
U.S. Family Network. The reporters' careful, painstaking work brought the stories home.
People always talk about two models for investigative reporting. The "Bob Greene model" of rolling out individual stories as soon as you can confirm them and the "Barlett and Steele model" of reporting for a year or so and then splashing out a big, multi-part series. We used a third model that is somewhere between the two: alternating waves of shorter individual stories with in-depth investigative projects that took up as many as two newspaper pages but did not go beyond a single day. The Abramoff story was so complex it seemed to require this sort of slow unraveling that built carefully throughout the year.
DAVID FINKEL: It wasn't learning as much as being reminded of the things that apply to any piece. Do your research. Don't assume anything. Start with an idea, but wait for the story. Report every sentence.
What are one or two things about the way The Washington Post operates that helped you accomplish this work?
JAMES GRIMALDI: The Washington Post has an amazing depth that manifests itself on the biggest stories. We have a crack research team and our work was bolstered in particular by the work of some of the best researchers at any newspaper in America -- Alice Crites, Lucy Shackelford, Derek Willis and Madonna Liebling. In addition, we have a deep bench of connected political writers, such as Thomas Edsall, who was very helpful, and lobbying experts, including Jeff Birnbaum. Also at the Post, on major projects, there are lots of people -- officially and unofficially -- who read the stories before they are published. Everyone who comments has something important to add that makes them better. The level of experience and intelligence is really remarkable and incredibly helpful.
ROBIN GIVHAN: I'd say that a lot of newspapers say they want writers to take risks and to think outside of the box, but they're not willing to deal with the response. Sometimes I've written things that have stirred up controversy. The Post has always supported me and encouraged me to think in as original a way as possible. I've had my AME call me at home to say, "I support you." I've also been lucky to have had the same editor for more than five years. That consistency breeds trust and a sense of collaboration.
JEFF LEEN:
The depth of reporting talent at the
Post allowed us to swarm this story with three outstanding investigators: Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith. Each brought unique skills but a very similar ability to penetrate into the hardest investigative terrain. Each produced major breaks that drove the story forward. The depth of editing talent at the
Post allowed us the ability to continually step back and strategize, as well as to give each story the care and polish it required. Investigations Editor Larry Roberts and I were able to work with strong editors on our national staff to ensure that the Abramoff team never wanted for guidance. State-of-the-art graphics brought another level of sophistication and clarity to the entire enterprise.
[Also], the support of top management who love and nurture investigative work made all the difference in the world. Executive Editor
Len Downie lives for stories like the Abramoff scandal; he took a personal, hands-on role in the editing and consistently made the work stronger. Our owner,
Don Graham, and our publisher,
Bo Jones, create the environment where the work can flourish. They voice their support regularly, and in person.
DAVID FINKEL: I'm not sure another paper would have sponsored and supported such a project. It took most of a year. It involved three trips to Yemen. Unlike projects that explore something that already happened and will almost certainly produce some kind of a story, this one depended on watching something unfold over the course of many months and didn't really come together until the last week or so of reporting; until then it very easily could have added up to a story not worth telling. It didn't exactly boost circulation, either -- even readers of
The Washington Post aren't rushing outside at dawn to find out about democracy exportation to Yemen.
Why would the
Post support such a project, then? One of the things newspapers do is to examine the words of public officials. In this case it was a president who has made democracy promotion the centerpiece of his foreign policy, saying things such as, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." What my editors wanted to know was what such words actually mean, and the way we decided to get at it was to go to the far side of that rhetoric and see what they meant there.
At first, the idea seemed simple enough. Pick a country. Pick a U.S.-funded democracy-promotion project. Go. Watch. Write. I don't think any of us imagined how complicated a reporting project this would turn out to be, but not once did the
Post hesitate, which I think is the best way to answer the question.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, the original version of this article reported that the Washington Post relied on a Wikipedia page to share information among colleagues. In fact, the Post used a different version of wiki software designed to restrict the page to certain users.
