Washington Post wins 6 Pulitzers

The Post received honours for coverage of topics including private security contractors in Iraq, a violin virtuoso’s incongruous (and mostly overlooked) performance in a Washington subway station, and US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s sub rosa exercise of executive power.

The only newspaper to have won more of the awards in a single year was The New York Times, which in 2002 took home seven Pulitzers, most of them for coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath.

With the newspaper industry obsessing over lost revenue and readers’ shift to the Internet, Post journalists saw the newspaper’s multiple prizes as confirmation of the continuing value of dogged reporting and artful writing. “Original reporting still matters,” Post staff writer and blogger Joel Achenbach wrote on the paper’s website on Monday. “It’s probably our best gimmick. It’s what we do (imperfectly to be sure) better than anyone else in the news business. It also can’t be easily replaced on the cheap by some other information-delivery system.”

The Post’s public service award came for its vivid accounts of the poor treatment suffered by wounded soldiers at what was supposed to be a premier medical facility. Reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille depicted a hospital littered with mouse droppings, broken-down furniture and an inattentive staff. The stories provoked widespread outrage, leading Defense Secretary Robert M Gates to fire Army Secretary Francis J Harvey.

Senator Claire McCaskill of Montana recalled on Monday how the Post’s stories “turned my stomach”. She said the Post’s reporting gave a lot of “oomph” to stalled legislation to improve treatment for active-duty military and veterans.

The Post won the national reporting prize for its four-part series about how Cheney has wielded power and policy influence like no previous vice-president. Reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker spent a year and interviewed more than 200 people in their research on Cheney. Gellman said on Monday that the Cheney story was such a “tough nut...