Newspapers in Gulfport, Miss., New Orleans, San Diego, Portand, Ore., Atlanta and Denver were among the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism today, but none of the awards went to newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Pulitzer Prize Patrol hasn’t visited the San Jose Mercury News since 1990. Same for the Oakland Tribune. The Chronicle had one last year for photography by Deanne Fitzmaurice and another in 1996 awarded to columnist Herb Caen. The Hearst-owned Examiner had one in 1987 for photography and the Merc in 1986 for international reporting.
No Bay Area dailies won Pulitzers in the 1960s or 70s.
In 1952, George De Carvalho of the Chronicle won a Pulitzer for his stories about a “ransom racket” that extorted “money from Chinese in the United States for relations held in Red China,” as the Pulitzer committee put it. In 1951, the Examiner’s Edward S. Montgomery won for his series on tax fraud. In 1950, Bill Crouch of the Oakland Tribune won for his picture of a near collision at an air show. In 1942, Stanton Delaplane of the Chronicle won for his articles on the movement of several California and Oregon counties to secede and form a 49th state. In 1934, the Chronicle’s Royce Brier won for his story about the lynching of two kidnappers in San Jose who had been arrested for abducting Brooke Hart, a merchant’s son.
TOTALS BY NEWSPAPER: Merc 2, Oakland Tribune 2, Examiner 2, Chronicle 5, Denver Post 4, Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal 4, Seattle Times 7, Miami Herald 18, Philadelphia Inquirer 18, Boston Globe 18, Chicago Tribune 24, Wall Street Journal 29, LA Times 37, NY Times, 93. Figures include today’s awards. [Pulitzer Prize history]