Series on Sierras Garners Pulitzer for Sacramento Bee : Awards: Newspaper also wins reporting prize. Both Newsday and N.Y. Times win 2 honors each.

The Sacramento Bee won the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service Tuesday for a series of 15 stories on environmental threats and damage to the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Bee reporter Deborah Blum also won a Pulitzer--in the beat reporting category--for “The Monkey Wars,” stories examining the moral and ethical issues involved in primate research. The New York Times and Newsday joined the Bee in winning two Pulitzers each.

Robert Schenkkan of Van Nuys won the drama prize for “The Kentucky Cycle,” a series of nine short plays, presented in two separate performances, that trace the lives of three families in eastern Kentucky over 200 years. “The Kentucky Cycle,” which was largely developed in Los Angeles, closed an eight-week run at the Mark Taper Forum last week after having premiered in Seattle last summer. It is the first play in the 76-year history of the Pulitzers to be honored without having been staged in New York.

Other Pulitzer Prize winners in the arts categories, all announced Tuesday at Columbia University in New York, included Wayne Peterson, in music, for “The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark,” a two-movement orchestral piece; Mark E. Neely Jr., in history, for “The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties;” Daniel Yergin, in general nonfiction, for “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power;” Lewis B. Puller Jr., in biography, for “Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet,” James Tate, in poetry, for “Selected Poems,” and Jane Smiley, in fiction, for “A Thousand Acres,” a recasting of “King Lear,” set on 1,000 acres of prime Iowa farmland and told from the viewpoint of his daughters.

Smiley, who was born in Los Angeles and now lives in Iowa, said she learned of the award early Tuesday when it was leaked to her by someone on her local newspaper, whose editor is on the Pulitzer Prize Board. She said she “felt a cold chill run through my body” when she was first told, then spent the morning “wondering if it was a cruel joke” before the official announcement came in the early afternoon.

The Pulitzer Prize Board also gave a “special award” to Art Spiegelman for “Maus,” a powerful, cartoon-like book of drawings and hand-lettered prose that told how Spiegelman’s father survived the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. In “Maus” and its sequel, “Maus II,” the Jews are often portrayed as mice, the Germans as cats.

The board decided this year to give no award in the criticism category for the first time since the category was created in 1970. In the past, however, the board has sometimes declined to give awards in various other journalism categories.

The board makes the final decisions in all arts and journalism categories, based on nominations by separate juries in each category.

“It was the general belief of the board that while all three of the finalists in criticism this year were interesting, none of them were of Pulitzer Prize caliber,” said Michael Gartner, chairman of the board.

When the board reached that decision last Friday, a telephone call was placed to Allan Temko, chairman of the criticism jury, and he provided the names of the next three finishers in the jury’s voting. But the board decided not to “hastily consider entries that the jury had given days of thoughtful deliberation to,” in the words of board member Geneva Overholser.

Temko, who won a Pulitzer in criticism two years ago himself, said he was “baffled” by the board’s decision not to honor one of the jury’s first three finalists, especially Leslie Savan, who was also a finalist last year and who, Temko said, has “created a whole new field of criticism” with her columns on advertising and the media for the Village Voice in New York.

Although juries submit their nominations in alphabetical order, Temko said Savan was the jury’s unanimous first choice. The other nominees were Michael Feingold, theater critic for the Village Voice, and Itabari Njeri of the Los Angeles Times, for an essay on race and black nationalism, especially in Spike Lee’s movie “Jungle Fever.”

Most Pulitzer entries are made by individual newspapers, but Njeri entered her story in the competition herself, an unusual but not unprecedented departure from the traditional practice.

What was unprecedented in this year’s Pulitzers, however, was the award to Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News, the first woman ever to win the prize in editorial cartooning. The award was doubly satisfying to Wilkinson and her colleagues because the Daily News is often seen as the neglected sibling of its larger sister paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, which won 17 Pulitzers from 1975 to 1990.

The Sacramento Bee, with its two prizes--including the most coveted, the award for public service--was this year’s big winner.

Tom Knudson, who wrote the Bee series “Majesty and Tragedy: The Sierra in Peril,” worked eight months on the project, conducting more than 200 interviews and traveling more than 10,000 miles, including several trips along the full, 400-mile length of the Sierra.

His series, which ran over five days last June, told the story of what Knudson called the “slow death” of the Sierra--”polluted air, dying forests, poisoned rivers, vanishing wildlife, eroding soil and rapid-fire development.”

Knudson, who also won a Pulitzer in 1985 when he wrote a series for the Des Moines Register on the dangers of farming as an occupation, works in the small town of Truckee for the Bee. He didn’t know he’d won Tuesday until he arrived in the paper’s Sacramento newsroom for an ostensible lunch appointment with editors and was immediately surrounded by well-wishers carrying plastic glasses full of champagne.

The celebration soon moved down the street to a local restaurant, and Gregory Favre, executive editor of the Bee, said the newsroom emptied out so quickly he could have “fired a shotgun in here and not hit anyone” by midafternoon.

Favre, who said state government reaction to Knudson’s series had been “tremendous and gratifying,” flew to Sacramento from Washington, D.C., Tuesday to preside over the paper’s celebration, then returned late Tuesday to Washington, where he was program chairman for the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The Bee’s two Pulitzer Prizes were the paper’s first since 1935, the only other time it won. In contrast, the New York Times won two Pulitzers Tuesday for the second year in a row, giving the paper 65 in all, far more than any other news organization.

The New York Times prizes were awarded Tuesday to:

* Anna Quindlen, in the commentary category, for what the Pulitzer Prize Board called “compelling columns on a wide range of personal and political topics.”

* Howell Raines, in the feature writing category, for a moving account of his white family’s friendship with its black housekeeper while he was growing up in racially segregated Alabama. Raines, Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, wrote the story for the paper’s Sunday magazine.

Newsday’s two Pulitzers Tuesday were won by:

* Patrick Sloyan, in international reporting, for his coverage of the Persian Gulf War, conducted after the war was over, which--the Pulitzer board said--”revealed new details of American battlefield tactics and ‘friendly fire’ incidents.”

* The staff of the paper’s New York edition, in spot news reporting, for its coverage of a midnight subway derailment that killed five passengers and injured more than 200.

Other Pulitzer Prizes in journalism this year were awarded to:

* Lorraine Adams and Dan Malone of the Dallas Morning News, in investigative reporting, for their disclosure of “extensive misconduct and abuses of power” by police in Texas.

* Robert S. Capers and Eric Lipton of the Hartford Courant, in explanatory journalism, for a series of articles about the flawed Hubble Space Telescope that “illustrated many of the problems plaguing America’s space program.”

* Jeff Taylor and Mike McGraw of the Kansas City Star, in national reporting, for their critical examination of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

* Maria Henson of the Lexington Herald-Leader, in editorial writing, for editorials on battered women, which “focused statewide attention on the problem and prompted significant reforms.”

* John Kaplan of Block Newspapers in Toledo, Ohio, in feature photography, for his pictures showing the diverse lifestyles of seven 21-year-olds across the United States.

* The staff of the Associated Press, in spot news photography, for pictures of the attempted coup in Russia and the subsequent collapse of the communist regime.

This was the second consecutive year the Associated Press won a Pulitzer for spot news photography. The news service has won 19 Pulitzers for photos among its total of 38 Pulitzers over the years, second only to the New York Times.

Individual Pulitzer Prizes carry with them a $3,000 award. The public service Pulitzer is made to the paper--this year the Sacramento Bee--in the form of a gold medal. The awards will be presented later this year by Columbia University, which administers them under a bequest from former newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer.

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Pulitzer Prize Winners

Winners of the 1992 Pulitzer Prizes, announced Tuesday in New York:

Journalism Awards Public service: the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee for reporting by Tom Knudson. Spot news reporting: New York Newsday staff. Investigative reporting: Lorraine Adams and Dan Malone of the Dallas Morning News. Explanatory journalism: Robert S. Capers and Eric Lipton of the Hartford (Conn.) Courant. Beat reporting: Deborah Blum of the Sacramento Bee. National reporting: Jeff Taylor and Mike McGraw of the Kansas City Star. International reporting: Patrick J. Sloyan of Newsday, Long Island. Feature writing: Howell Raines of the New York Times. Commentary: Anna Quindlen of the New York Times. Criticism: no award. Editorial writing: Maria Henson of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. Editorial cartooning: Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News. Spot news photography: the Associated Press staff. Feature photography: John Kaplan of Block Newspapers, Toledo, Ohio.

The Arts Fiction: “A Thousand Acres,” by Jane Smiley. Drama: “The Kentucky Cycle,” by Robert Schenkkan. History: “The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties,” by Mark E. Neely Jr. Biography: “Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet,” by Lewis B. Puller Jr. Poetry: “Selected Poems,” by James Tate. General nonfiction: “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power,” by Daniel Yergin. Music: “The Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark,” by Wayne Peterson. Special award: “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman.

Non-Winning Finalists

Following is a list of non-winning finalists for the 1992 Pulitzer Prizes. Pulitzer juries generally make up to three recommendations in each category without listing them in order of preference. The Pulitzer board, which awards the prizes, is not limited to these recommendations in choosing a winner.

Journalism

Public service: the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News for reporting by Mike Casey and Russell Carollo on neglect of worker safety; the Washington Post for stories about gun violence.

Spot news reporting: the Philadelphia Inquirer staff for coverage of the helicopter crash in which Sen. John Heinz was killed; staff of the weekly Vineyard Gazette, Edgartown, Mass., for hurricane coverage.

Investigative reporting: the Greenville (S.C.) News for investigation of abuses at a University of South Carolina foundation; Jennifer Hyman, the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y., for stories of secret CIA-Rochester Institute of Technology links.

Explanatory journalism: James O’Byrne, Mark Schleifstein and G. Andrew Boyd, the Times-Picayune, New Orleans, for articles on toxic waste and pollution; Rob Carson, Geff Hinds and Suki Dardarian, the Morning News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash., for coverage of the campaign to let terminally ill people choose death.

Beat reporting: Russ Conway, the Eagle-Tribune, Lawrence, Mass., for stories about questionable business practices in professional hockey; Gregg Jones of the defunct Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, for stories about faltering rural health care.

National reporting: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, the Philadelphia Inquirer, for series on public policy failures that have diminished the middle class; Maureen Dowd, the New York Times, for coverage of politics.

International reporting: Dudley Althaus, Houston Chronicle, for writing about the cholera epidemic in Peru and Mexico; Los Angeles Times staff for coverage of Soviet Union’s collapse.

Feature writing: Frank Bruni, Detroit Free Press, profile of a child molester; Sheryl James, St. Petersburg Times, account of effort to transplant organs of a dead boy.

Commentary: Liz Balmaseda, the Miami Herald, columns on Cuban-American issues; Robert Lipsyte, the New York Times, commentary on sports.

Criticism: Michael Feingold, the Village Voice, theater reviews; Itabari Njeri, Los Angeles Times, essay on race and black nationalism; Leslie Savan, the Village Voice, columns on advertising and media.

Editorial writing: Henry Bryan, the Philadelphia Inquirer, urging state support of transit system; Robert J. Gaydos, the Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y., on local and national issues.

Editorial cartooning: Steve Benson, the Morning News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash., and the Arizona Republic; Ralph Dunagin, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.

Spot news photography: the Associated Press staff for photos of Albanian refugees stranded in Italy; David C. Turnley, Detroit Free Press, Gulf War photo of grieving soldier.

Feature photography: Paul Kuroda, Orange County Register, Santa Ana, Calif., journey of illegal immigrants; Bill Snead, the Washington Post, Kurdish refugee camps.

The Arts

Fiction: “Mao II,” by Don DeLillo; “Jernigan,” by David Gates; “Lila: An Inquiry into Morals,” by Robert M. Pirsig. (Jury recommended four books.)

Drama: “Miss Evers’ Boys,” by David Feldshuh; “Conversations With My Father,” by Herb Gardner; “Sight Unseen,” by Donald Margulies; “Two Trains Running,” by August Wilson. (Jury recommended five plays.)

History: “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West,” by William Cronon; “A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs,” by Theodore Draper; “Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century,” by John Frederick Martin; “The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815,” by Richard White. (Jury recommended four books.)

Biography: “Frederick Douglass,” by William S. McFeely; “Orwell: The Authorized Biography,” by Michael Shelden.

Poetry: “Selected Poems,” by Robert Creeley; “An Atlas of the Difficult World, Poems 1988-1991,” by Adrienne Rich.

General nonfiction: “Broken Vessels,” by Andre Dubus; “Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics,” by Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall.

Music: “Concerto Fantastique,” by Ralph Shapey.