Press: Local Angle: A Texas paper wins a Pulitzer

As the Pentagon reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mark Thompson always kept an eye out for military stories with a Texas angle. In 1983, when he came across a small article in a helicopter-news magazine about a chopper that had crashed, Thompson was intrigued. The manufacturer, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc., is Fort Worth’s second largest employer, with some 6,000 workers. Thompson clipped the story but forgot about it until a few months later, when he read that another Bell helicopter had met the same fate. Both accidents were caused by “mast bumping,” which means that the helicopter’s blades tilt so badly that they strike the mast supporting them and sometimes slice through the cockpit.

Thompson began digging and discovered that mast bumping was cited as a cause of at least 67 crashes and had killed nearly 250 servicemen. His five-part series on the fatal defect ran in March 1984; two months later, the U.S. Army grounded almost 600 helicopters and fitted them with stronger shafts. Another gratifying consequence came last week: the Fort Worth Star-Telegram won the newspaper world’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize for public service, for Thompson’s work.

The coveted gold medal contrasts sharply with the angry hubbub that first greeted the stories. Bell officials, who had blamed the accidents on reckless pilots, banned the paper’s delivery trucks from its plant and launched an unsuccessful advertising boycott among local businessmen. Some 1,300 readers canceled subscriptions. “I was vindicated last year when the Army grounded the helicopters,” said Thompson, “but the Pulitzer gives me a great deal of satisfaction because it comes from colleagues.” None of the customary victors–the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal–took home a Pulitzer this year. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Long Island’s Newsday each won two prizes. One of the Inquirer’s Pulitzers went to Reporter William Marimow for his expose of police-dog attacks against more than 350 people, most of whom were not crime suspects. The series resulted in an overhaul of the canine unit, including the firing of its director. Newsday earned its awards for stories on African famine and for the elegantly styled commentary of Columnist Murray Kempton.

Jon Franklin of the Baltimore Evening Sun won in the new category of explanatory journalism for a seven-part series on molecular psychiatry; he captured his first Pulitzer in 1979 for a two-part story on brain surgery. Alice Steinbach of the Baltimore Sun, the Evening’s sister paper, earned a Pulitzer for feature writing. Among other winners:

— Thomas Knudson of the Des Moines Register for a six-part series on the occupational dangers of farming.

— Lucy Morgan and Jack Reed of the St. Petersburg Times for their investigation of alleged corruption in a county sheriff’s office.

— Political Cartoonist Jeff MacNelly of the Chicago Tribune (his third Pulitzer).

— Studs Terkel, Chicago’s Homer of the common man, for his book, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two.

— Alison Lurie for her novel Foreign Affairs.

— Sunday in the Park With George, with music by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine, won the drama prize. Inspired by the work of French Pointillist Georges Seurat, Sunday is the first musical to receive the honor since A Chorus Line in 1976.