Times TV Critic, Ft. Worth Newspaper Win Pulitzers

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram was awarded the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service today, and Times television critic Howard Rosenberg won a Pulitzer in the criticism category.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsday on New York’s Long Island won two Pulitzers each. Jeff MacNelly of the Chicago Tribune won the cartooning prize for a third time, thus becoming only the fifth person (all of them cartoonists) to win three Pulitzers since the awards began in 1917.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s award was given for a series of stories by Mark J. Thompson, which revealed that almost 250 U.S. servicemen had lost their lives because of a design problem in helicopters built by Bell Helicopter Textron. The revelation ultimately led the Army to ground almost 600 Huey helicopters pending modification.

The Pulitzer Prizes are the most prestigious awards in American journalism. The public service award, traditionally the most coveted of the Pulitzers, carries with it a gold medal. Prizes of $1,000 are given in each of the other Pulitzer categories.

14th Prize for Times

Rosenberg’s Pulitzer was The Times’ third in two years and 14th overall.

Rosenberg, 42, came to The Times in 1978 from the Louisville Times, where he had been a television critic for eight years and, before that, a general assignment reporter and political writer for two years. His Pulitzer entry included columns on subjects ranging from presidential campaign coverage to Olympics coverage to television’s treatment of death.

Rosenberg had been the first choice of the Pulitzer commentary jury in 1981 but lost the prize when the Pulitzer Prize Board, which has final authority for the prizes, gave the award to someone else.

Arts and Letters

Pulitzers awarded in the arts and letters categories today were:

Fiction: Alison Lurie (for “Foreign Affairs”).

General nonfiction: Studs Terkel (for “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II”).

Drama: “Sunday in the Park With George” (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine).

Biography: Kenneth Silverman (for “The Life and Times of Cotton Mather”).

History: Thomas K. McCraw (for “Prophets of Regulation”).

Poetry: Carolyn Kaiser (for “Yin”).

Music: Stephen Albert (for “Symphony, RiverRun”).

Special Citation

There was also a special citation in music awarded to William Schuman for “more than half a century of contribution to American music as composer and educational leader.” In 1943, Schuman won the first Pulitzer ever awarded in the music category--for his composition “Secular Cantata No. 2, A Free Song.”

Winners in the other journalism categories were:

General news reporting: Thomas Turcol of the Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star for City Hall coverage that exposed the corruption of a local economic development official.

Investigative reporting (two awards): Lucy Morgan and Jack Reed of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times for “their thorough reporting on Pasco County Sheriff John Short, which revealed his department’s corruption and led to his removal from office by voters,” and William K. Marimow of the Philadelphia Inquirer for stories revealing that city police dogs had attacked more than 350 people--an expose that led to investigations of the K-9 unit and removal of a dozen officers from it.

Honored for ‘Mind Fixers’

Explanatory journalism: Jon Franklin, science writer for the Baltimore Sun, for a seven-part series, “The Mind Fixers,” about the new science of molecular psychiatry.

Specialized reporting: Randall Savage and Jackie Crosby of the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph & News for an examination of academics and athletics at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech.

Reporting on national affairs: Thomas J. Knudson of the Des Moines Register for a series of articles on the dangers of farming.

Reporting on international affairs: Josh Friedman, Dennis Bell and (photographer) Ozier Muhammad of Newsday for their series on the plight of the hungry in Africa.

Baltimore Writer Wins

Feature writing: Alice Steinbach of the Baltimore Sun for her account of “a blind boy’s world--’A Boy of Unusual Vision.’ ”

Commentary: Murray Kempton of Newsday for “witty and insightful reflection on public issues in 1984 and throughout a distinguished career.”

Editorial writing: Richard Aregood of the Philadelphia Daily News for editorials on a variety of subjects.

Spot news photography: The photo staff of the Register of Orange County for “exceptional photographic coverage of the Olympic Games.”

Feature photography: Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe for a series of photos of the famine in Ethiopia and his photos of illegal aliens on the Mexican border, and Larry C. Price of the Philadelphia Inquirer for a series of photos from Angola and El Salvador “depicting their war-torn inhabitants.”