Times Awarded Pulitzer for Coverage of Quake : Honors: Prize is paper’s second in three years for covering a calamity. Small daily wins for public service.

The Los Angeles Times won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news Tuesday for its coverage of the chaos and devastation of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which killed 61 people and caused more than $11 billion in damage.

The award, given to the entire staff of The Times, is the paper’s second Pulitzer in three years for coverage of a major Southern California calamity. The paper won in 1993 for its reporting on the 1992 Los Angeles riots and was a finalist last year for coverage of the deadly fires that roared through Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties in October and November of 1993.

The Virgin Islands Daily News of St. Thomas won this year’s gold medal for public service, the single most prestigious journalistic Pulitzer of the 14 announced Tuesday, for its reporting on the links between corruption and ineptitude in the local criminal justice system and a high rate of violent crime in the islands.

The Virgin Islands paper, with a circulation of 16,400 and a staff of 21, including part-timers, is one of the smallest ever to win a Pulitzer.

Three newspapers--the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Newsday--were awarded two Pulitzers each, as was the Associated Press.

Two elder statesmen in the arts also won Pulitzers. Composer Morton Gould, 81, garnered the award in music for his orchestral composition “String Music,” which had its debut performance in Washington last month.

Horton Foote, 79, won the Pulitzer Prize in drama for his off-Broadway production “Young Man From Atlanta,” the story of a husband and wife trying to deal with the death of their only child. Foote, widely known for his sensitive portrayals of small-town Texas life, previously won Academy Awards for his adaptation of the Harper Lee novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” and for the film version of his play “Tender Mercies.”

In the other arts categories, the Pulitzer winners Tuesday were:

* Fiction: Carol Shields for “The Stone Diaries.”

* Biography: Joan D. Hedrick for “Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life.”

* History: Doris Kearns Goodwin for “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.”

* General nonfiction: Jonathan Weiner for “The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time” (which also won the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science).

* Poetry: Philip Levine for “The Simple Truth.”

Levine said Tuesday that he thought the Pulitzers were to be announced last week, on his mother’s birthday, and that if he won, he had planned to call her and say, “ ‘Mom, look what I’ve got for your 91st birthday!’ So I’m going to call her a week late.”

The Pulitzers are awarded annually by Columbia University, and except for the public service award, each carries with it a $3,000 prize. The public service award is a gold medal, which is awarded to the newspaper, rather than to individual journalists. This year, however, in an unusual departure, the winning public service entry was almost completely the work of one man, reporter Melvin Claxton, who has worked for the Virgin Islands News on and off since he was a college student in 1983.

Claxton, 37, a native of Antigua, returned to the paper full time last spring specifically to examine the wave of violent crime that was sweeping the islands and frightening the population. He spent six months working on the resultant 10-part series, an extraordinary commitment of time and resources for so small a paper.

Claxton documented widespread abuses and ineptness in the islands’ criminal justice system, including drug sales by police, the disappearance of $1 million worth of cocaine from the police evidence room and a startlingly low level of prosecution, conviction and incarceration in violent crimes. He also found that a machine gun used in the murder of eight people in St. Croix had been sold to the killer by a policeman who had taken it from the department’s evidence room.

Unlike many big-city Pulitzer winners, who learn of their impending triumph--or at least hear rumors about it--before the announcement, Claxton said he didn’t even know he was a finalist until J. Lowe Davis, project editor for his series, saw the announcement come across her newsroom computer screen Tuesday afternoon.

“She let out a scream,” he said, “and she started yelling, ‘We won! We won! Oh, my God!’ ”

There were similar scenes in nine other newsrooms Tuesday, most of them on the East Coast. The Los Angeles Times was the only award-winner from west of the Mississippi, and when official word of the spot news prize was received in The Times’ Downtown newsroom a few moments past noon, scores of staff members burst into applause. Carol Stogsdill, senior editor at the paper, immediately began cutting the neckties off many of her colleagues with a large, sharp pair of scissors, a ritual that began when the paper won its Pulitzer for the 1992 riots.

Later Tuesday, with pieces of more than two dozen ties pinned on the bulletin board adjacent to her office, Stogsdill reflected on the sacrifice many Times staffers made to cover the quake.

“They had major damage to their homes--one told me tonight he’d just paid a $33,000 bill--but they all set aside their personal situations, left their families and homes and the debris, so they could cover the story.”

Richard T. Schlosberg III, publisher of The Times, praised the professionalism of the staff and called this Pulitzer--The Times’ 20th--”a collective effort, largely unsupervised . . . that we can all take great pride in.”

The Times won its award for coverage of the first day of the earthquake, when reporters and editors began work with no electrical power, using manual typewriters, flashlights and walkie-talkies. When staffers first reported to work, not even cellular phones were functioning.

“We couldn’t communicate with each other,” said Leo Wolinsky, the metropolitan editor, “but everyone knew just where to go and what to do. They really were unsupervised for a long time. We didn’t get power back until about 12:45. It was teamwork that did it.”

At the headquarters of The Times’ San Fernando Valley edition in Chatsworth, staffers also celebrated Tuesday. The site is just a few miles from the epicenter of the quake, where on Jan. 17 staffers had arrived to find their office dark and uninhabitable. Desks and files were overturned, windows were shattered, walls were separated, water pipes had broken and water was pouring over the city desk.

“We weren’t allowed in the building for three hours,” said Ardith Hilliard, managing editor of the Valley Edition. “We had to set up in the parking lot and send our copy and photos Downtown by helicopter. With no computers and no phones, we felt isolated.

“But reporters found the hot spots--all the fires, the Northridge Meadows apartment building, where 16 died, the parking structure that collapsed at Cal State Northridge, everything,” Hilliard said.

Valley reporters got their laptop computers hooked up, then were allowed to return to certain parts of their office.

Meanwhile, reporters and photographers from the Valley and Downtown offices were fanning over the Southland in a massive effort to record the ruin they saw. All told, more than 200 Times reporters and editors worked on the earthquake story.

After their experience covering riots, fires and the quake, staffers have begun referring to themselves as “the masters of disaster.” On Tuesday, Wolinsky said the experience of the previous stories had helped the staff “perfect the art of breaking down barriers between departments so we could bring all our resources to play in pinpointing the most important stories for our readers.”

Shelby Coffey III, editor of The Times, called the Pulitzer “a great victory for teamwork. Reporters, photographers, editors and other staffers were jolted out of bed at 4:31 like everybody else, but they rushed out to work.”

“They produced a range of stories, from the overviews to the stories of human tragedy to the science stories to a section on coping, along with the photographs and graphics that were, looking back on it today, representative of an extraordinary edition of the paper,” Coffey said.

“The obstacle was not just getting the information, but getting the paper out. This is one of those prizes in which everybody can share.”

Pulitzer winners in journalism are selected by a Pulitzer Prize Board of 12 men and six women, most of them top news executives, based on nominations of three finalists by each of 14 juries of journalists selected from across the country. As is the case virtually every year, the board exercised its right this year to overrule the juries, this time in two categories.

In feature writing and beat reporting, the board rejected the three nominees of the juries and asked for a second set of nominees. In each case, the panel also rejected the second set and instead shifted a finalist from another category and gave him the award.

The winner in beat reporting was David Shribman, who had been nominated as a finalist in national reporting. Shribman, assistant managing editor, Washington bureau chief and columnist for the Boston Globe, was honored for his “analytical reporting on Washington developments and the national scene.”

The winner in feature reporting was Ron Suskind of the Wall Street Journal, who had been nominated as a finalist in explanatory reporting. Suskind was cited for “his stories about inner-city honor students in Washington, D.C., and their determination to survive and prosper.”

This was one of three categories in which stories were honored for examining the problems of the inner city or the working poor.

Reporter Leon Dash and photographer Lucian Perkins of the Washington Post won a Pulitzer in explanatory journalism for their profile of three generations of the Rosa Lee Cunningham family and the family’s struggle with the destructive cycle of poverty, illiteracy, crime and drug abuse.

Dash’s eight-part series, which he worked on over four years, drew more than 4,000 phone calls from readers.

Tony Horwitz of the Wall Street Journal won the national reporting prize for his stories about working conditions in low-wage America. To research his story, he worked in chicken slaughterhouses in Arkansas and Mississippi, and found himself so appalled by what he saw that he said Tuesday, “I won’t be celebrating with a chicken dinner tonight.”

Two other Pulitzers were awarded for journalistic excellence in covering the horrors of ethnic violence and slaughter in Rwanda. Both went to the Associated Press. Mark Fritz won in international reporting; four AP photographers---Jacqueline Arzt, Javier Bauluz, Jean-Marc Bouju and Karsten Thielker--won the award in feature photography.

Newsday, the New York newspaper that, like the Los Angeles Times, is owned by Times Mirror Co., won Pulitzers in commentary (Jim Dwyer) and investigative reporting (Brian Donovan and Stephanie Saul).

Other Pulitzer winners were:

* Margo Jefferson, New York Times, criticism.

* Jeffrey Good, St. Petersburg Times, editorial writing.

* Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Constitution, editorial cartooning.

* Carol Guzy, Washington Post, spot news photography.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Winning Entry

The Pulitzer prize for spot news went to the staff of the Los Angeles Times for reporting on the Jan. 17, 1994, Northridge earthquake. Times editors said they tried to make the coverage comprehensive, insightful and, most important, helpful to the thousands who lost possessions and homes or were experiencing personal trauma.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Winners and Finalists

Here are the Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists. The Pulitzers are awarded annually by Columbia University and each carries with it a $3,000 prize except for the public service award, which is a gold medal.

JOURNALISM

* Public service. Winner: The Virgin Islands Daily News for reporting, largely by Melvin Claxton, on crime rate and corruption in local criminal justice. Finalists: The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, for reporting on inner-city decline; The Philadelphia Inquirer, for exposing election fraud.

* Spot news reporting. Winner: Los Angeles Times staff for coverage of the Northridge earthquake. Finalists: The New York Times staff, for coverage of police corruption in Harlem; The Rocky Mountain News, Denver, for reporting on wildfire that killed 14 firefighters.

* Investigative reporting. Winners: Brian Donovan and Stephanie Saul of Newsday for stories on abuses in police disability pensions. Finalists: Dave Davis and Joan Mazzolini of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, for series on medical abuses; Keith A. Harriston and Mary Pat Flaherty of The Washington Post, for series on careless personnel practices in the police department.

* Explanatory journalism. Winners: Leon Dash, writer, and Lucian Perkins, photographer, of The Washington Post for profile of poor family struggling against ruin. Finalists: The Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, for probe of practices at Southern Poverty Law Center; Ron Suskind of The Wall Street Journal, for reports about struggles of inner-city honor students.

* Beat reporting. Winner: David Shribman of the Boston Globe, for Washington reporting. Finalists: Michael J. Berens of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, for series on inequities in municipal courts; Jason DeParle of The New York Times, for federal welfare coverage; Tom Hallman Jr. of The Oregonian, Portland, for reporting on public safety and for stories about prosecution of drunken driver convicted of killing four pedestrians.

* National reporting. Winner: Tony Horwitz of The Wall Street Journal, for stories about working conditions in low-wage fields. Finalists: David Shribman of The Boston Globe for Washington reporting; David Zucchino, Stephen Seplow and John Woestendiek of The Philadelphia Inquirer, for reporting on history and impact of violence in America.

* International reporting. Winner: Mark Fritz of The Associated Press for coverage of slaughter in Rwanda. Finalists: Barbara Demick of The Philadelphia Inquirer, for reporting about war’s effect in a Sarajevo neighborhood; Lewis M. Simons and Michael Zielenziger of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News for series on influence of overseas Chinese on Asia.

* Feature writing. Winner: Ron Suskind of the Wall Street Journal, for reports about the struggles of inner-city honor students. Finalists: David Finkel of The Washington Post, for reporting on middle-class flight from the capital; Anne V. Hull of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, for account of a businessman’s secret drug and sex life; Fen Montaigne of The Philadelphia Inquirer, for stories about outdoors enthusiasts.

* Commentary. Winner: Jim Dwyer of New York Newsday for columns about New York City. Finalists: Paul A. Gigot of The Wall Street Journal, for Washington political columns; Carl T. Rowan of the Chicago Sun-Times, for columns on corruption and mismanagement in the NAACP.

* Criticism. Winner: Margo Jefferson of The New York Times, for book reviews and cultural criticism. Finalists: Stephen Hunter of The Sun, Baltimore, for film criticism; Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal, for writing about television.

* Editorial writing. Winner: Jeffrey Good of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times for editorials urging probate reform. Finalists: The Des Moines (Iowa) Register editorial staff, for “elegantly written” editorials boosting state; Bailey Thomson, Carol McPhail and David Thomasson of The Mobile (Ala.) Press Register, for advocating that state revise its constitution.

* Editorial cartooning. Winner: Mike Luckovich of The Atlanta Constitution. Finalists: Robert L. Ariail of The State, Columbia, S.C.; Jim Borgman of The Cincinnati Enquirer.

* Spot news photography. Winner: Carol Guzy of The Washington Post for crisis in Haiti. Finalists: Denis Farrell of The Associated Press, for aerial view of South Africans lined up to vote; David Leeson of The Dallas Morning News, for Texas family in chest-high floodwater.

* Feature photography. Winner: The Associated Press staff for Rwanda portfolio. Finalists: Carl Bower, for freelance photos of woman’s fight against breast cancer, published by Newhouse News Service; the Press-Telegram, Long Beach, Calif., staff, for “life-affirming images” of local people.

***

ARTS

* Fiction. Winner: “The Stone Diaries,” by Carol Shields. Finalists: “What I Lived For,” by Joyce Carol Oates; “The Collected Stories,” by Grace Paley.

* Drama. Winner: “The Young Man From Atlanta,” by Horton Foote. Finalists: “The Cryptogram,” by David Mamet; “Seven Guitars,” by August Wilson.

* History. Winner: “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Finalists: “Stories of Scottsboro,” by James Goodman; “Lincoln In American Memory,” by Merrill D. Peterson.

* Biography. Winner: “Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life,” by Joan D. Hedrick. Finalists: “Hugo Black: A Biography,” by Roger K. Newman; “Saint-Exupery: A Biography,” by Stacy Schiff.

* Poetry. Winner: “The Simple Truth,” by Philip Levine. Finalists: “Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992,” by Allen Ginsberg; “On the Great Atlantic Rainway: Selected Poems 1950-1988” and “One Train,” by Kenneth Koch.

* General nonfiction. Winner: “The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time,” by Jonathan Weiner. Finalists: “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story,” by John Berendt; “How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter,” by Sherwin B. Nuland.

* Music. Winner: “Stringmusic,” by Morton Gould. Finalists: “Evensong,” by Donald Erb; “Adam, a cantata for mixed chorus with soprano solo and small orchestra,” by Andrew Imbrie.

Source: Associated Press