“Harris describes Pulitzer's Gold as being for journalists and students seeking to learn about great newspaper work as well as for American history buffs. The book touches a larger audience:  people interested in a good read; readers looking for good efforts that make a difference; those who believe in fighting for something worthwhile; and citizens who want to better understand society.”—Karen Brown Dunlap, President and Managing Director, The Poynter Institute

"At a time when the business model of the American newspaper lies broken, this book tells us, by vivid examples, why newspapers are essential to our national well-being. It is a sobering yet inspiring message."—John S. Carroll, former Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and Lexington Herald-Leader editor, and Pulitzer Prize Board member from 1993 to 2002

“I have read lots of books about investigative and other public service journalism. So when a book in that realm is fresh and exciting to me, that is an accomplishment. Harris says he ‘attempts to trace the development of American journalism in a new way’ by building cases from Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal winners. He delivers on that promise. He also pledges to acknowledge reporters and editors who may have gotten little personal attention at the time because the Gold Medal is a newspaper honor, not an award for individuals. Again, he delivers.”—Steve Weinberg, author of Telling the Untold Story: How Investigative Reporters Are Changing the Craft of Biography

No journalism awards are awaited with as much anticipation as the Pulitzer Prizes. And among those Pulitzers, none is more revered than the Joseph Pulitzer Gold Medal.

Pulitzer’s Gold is the first book to trace the ninety-year history of the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded annually to a newspaper rather than to individuals, in the form of that Gold Medal. Exploring this service-journalism legacy, Roy Harris recalls dozens of “stories behind the stories,” often allowing the journalists involved to share their own accounts. Here are a vivid description of the Boston Globe’s uncovering of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests; an analysis of how the New York Times helped the community cope with the 9/11 attacks; and tales of the brilliant coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s by two wounded papers, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and the Sun Herald in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Readers will recognize some of the stories, like the New York Times’s Pentagon Papers exclusive and the Watergate scandal that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein dug up for the Washington Post. But Harris takes his Gold Medal saga through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights struggle, and the Vietnam era before bringing public-service journalism into today’s age of environmental and corporate exposés. Among the hidden treasures that come alive: how the Boston Post exposed the original Roaring Twenties Ponzi schemer—dapper, silver-tongued Charles Ponzi himself—and how northern California’s tiny, remote Point Reyes Light, thirty years ago, discovered that the Synanon antidrug program had become a dangerous armed cult. (As the Light investigated, one Synanon critic was attacked by a rattlesnake that had been stuffed into his mailbox by group operatives, taking the story, and the Light’s fame, national.)

Through these and other Gold Medal accounts, newspaper teamwork gets its due as a driving factor in great journalism, and Harris acknowledges reporters and editors who may have received little personal attention when their papers received the awards. He also examines the evolution of the judging process since the first Pulitzers in 1917, addressing controversies arising over the public-service selections.

At a time when newspaper journalism is severely challenged, story after story illustrates how public-service reporting has been a point of pride for the American press, whether by small-town papers or metropolitan dailies. Pulitzer’s Gold offers a new way of looking at journalism history and practice and a new lens through which to view America’s own story.