Education Stories at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Patriot-News Win Pulitzer Prizes
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s remarkable series on the
dangerous climate of violence in the city’s public schools was
rewarded Monday with the Pulitzer
Prize for Public Service.
The higher education beat also yielded a Pulitzer this year.
Sara
Ganim and the Patriot-News staff won the local
reporting prize for coverage of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse
scandal at Penn State. Ganim’s dogged coverage outshone national
media outlets that were late to jump on the story.
(California Watch’s “On Shaky Ground”
series examining shortfalls in school construction, which made
the short list for the local reporting prize, is also worth a
read.)
The time and resources the Inquirer devoted to its
year-long project were substantial. Five reporters spent months
visiting campuses, conducting hundreds of interviews, and
building a comprehensive database of campus crime statistics.
The resulting seven-part series,
“Assault on Learning,” was nothing short of astonishing. More
than 4,000 Philadelphia teachers had been assaulted over a
five-year period. Violent behavior among students started as
early as kindergarten. Efforts to curb violence were fragmented,
and the more successful initiatives were not replicated on a
wider scale. School communities were struggling to reclaim their
campuses.
As the Pulitzer citation
points out, the series used “powerful print narratives and
videos to illuminate crimes committed by children against
children and to stir reforms to improve safety for teachers and
students.”
At a time when newsroom resources are shrinking across the
country — including in Philadelphia –the Inquirer’s
Pulitzer win is a reminder of just how many important stories are
waiting to be told, particularly when it comes to the education
beat.
Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Contact Emily Richmond. Follow her on Twitter @EWAEmily.
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