A listing of the Pulitzer Prize award winners for 1998:
Journalism
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|Public Service||Grand Forks Herald (N.D.)||" ... for its sustained and informative coverage, vividly illustrated with photographs, that helped hold its community together in the wake of flooding, a blizzard and a fire that devastated much of the city, including the newspaper plant itself..."
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|Beat Reporting||Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times||" ... for her consistently illuminating coverage of the United States Supreme Court..."
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|Spot News Photography||Martha Rial of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette||" ... for her life-affirming portraits of survivors of the conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi."
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|Breaking News Reporting||Staff of the Los Angeles Times||" ... for its comprehensive coverage of a botched bank robbery and subsequent police shoot-out in North Hollywood, Los Angeles."
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|Commentary||Mike McAlary of the New York Daily News||" ... for reporting on the brutalization of a Haitian immigrant by police officers at a Brooklyn stationhouse."
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|Criticism||Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times||" ... for her passionate, intelligent writing on books and contemporary literature."
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|Editorial Cartooning||Stephen P. Breen of Asbury Park Press (Neptune City, New Jersey)
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|Editorial Writing||Bernard L. Stein of The Riverdale Press, a New York City weekly journal||" ... for his gracefully-written editorials on politics and other issues affecting New York City residents."
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|Explanatory Reporting||Paul Salopek of the Chicago Tribune||" ... for his enlightening profile of the Human Genome Diversity Project, which seeks to chart the genetic relationship among all people."
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|Feature Photography||Clarence Williams of the Los Angeles Times||" ... for his powerful images documenting the plight of young children with parents addicted to alcohol and drugs."
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|Feature Writing||Thomas French of the St. Petersburg Times||" ... for his detailed and compassionate narrative portrait of a mother and two daughters slain on a Florida vacation, and the three-year investigation into their murders and eventual capture of Oba Chandler."
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|International Reporting||Staff of The New York Times||" ... for its revealing series that profiled the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico.
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|Investigative Reporting||Gary Cohn and Will Englund of The Baltimore Sun||" ... for their compelling series on the international shipbreaking industry, that revealed the dangers posed to workers and the environment when discarded ships are dismantled."
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|National Reporting||Russell Carollo and Jeff Nesmith of Dayton Daily News||" ... for their reporting that disclosed dangerous flaws and mismanagement in the military health care system and prompted reforms."
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Letters
- Biography or Autobiography
- Personal History by Katharine Graham (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Fiction
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
- History
- Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward Larson (BasicBooks)
- General Nonfiction
- Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (W.W. Norton)
- Poetry
- Black Zodiac by Charles Wright (Farrar)
- Drama
- How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel (TCG)
- Music
- String Quartet No. 2 (musica instrumentalis) by Aaron Jay Kernis (Associated Music Publishers)
Premiered on January 19, 1990, at Merkin Concert Hall, New York City, by The Lark Quartet.
Special Awards and Citations
- Special Citation
- George Gershwin - Awarded posthumously to George Gershwin, commemorating the centennial year of his birth, for his distinguished and enduring contributions to American music.
