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. 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 a twenty-first century that includes 9/11, a Catholic Church scandal, and corporate exposes. "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.

Author Biography

Roy J. Harris Jr. served from 1971 to 1994 as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, including six years as deputy chief of its fourteen-member Los Angeles bureau. He then spent thirteen years as senior editor of The Economist Group's CFO magazine. Early in his career he reported at the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.