Pulitzer for ‘illuminating, impactful reporting’
Baltimore Sun honored for coverage of mayor’s ‘Healthy Holly’ book scandal
The Baltimore Sun won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting Monday for the staff’s work uncovering the “Healthy Holly” book-publishing scheme that led to the resignation of Mayor Catherine Pugh and contributed to her federal conviction on fraud and other charges.
Pugh, who grossed more than $850,000 from no-bid contracts and double-selling of copies of her children’s books, was sentenced in February to three years in federal prison. The Sun’s investigation also prompted state leaders to reconstitute the board of the University of Maryland Medical System; its CEO and four other officials resigned.
In a video chat with newsroom staff, mostly working from home because of the coronavirus stayat-home order, Baltimore Sun Media editor-in-chief and publisher Trif Alatzas lauded the group effort by the reporters, editors, audience and visuals staff.
“It was just an all-out effort — really, really great work by everybody, and I’m just glad to be a part of it,” Alatzas said from his square of the video chat to a staff that broke out in cheers watching the announcement of the prize winners.
And indeed, the 10 stories in The Sun’s entry carried eight bylines, representing a newsroom in which nearly everyone pitched in at some point.
“It was this magical time in the newsroom,” Alatzas said as staff members shared memories of chasing down the story as it spiraled in multiple directions.
They remembered searching for the books themselves, finding them in boxes in a school district warehouse and in a reporter’s basement, where she stashed them after receiving them while covering Pugh’s mayoral campaign. There were phone calls upon phone calls that revealed
how extensively the scandal’s tentacles reached into the city’s power structure. And there was there was the lucky timing for one reporter who, while headed to City Hall on another matter, ran into the mayor’s lawyer, arriving with her resignation letter in hand.
The prize was particularly sweet because its category, local news, is “what The Sun is all about,” Alatzas said.
The Pulitzer judges awarded The Sun “for illuminating, impactful reporting on a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.”
It was a remarkable fall from grace for Pugh, who had called being mayor her dream job. And yet it started, said lead reporter Luke Broadwater, “the same way so many stories start.”
In other words, a tip that led to phone calls, searches of public records and shoeleather reporting.
“Everyone just started rolling,” said Broadwater, who also celebrated his 40th birthday on Monday. “Everybody just kept pushing. There was always a new onion to peel.
“It was really quite a ride,” he said.
Editorial cartoonist Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher was a finalist this year in the editorial cartooning category, in a submission that spanned work for The Sun and other outlets.
This was the sixth time since 2015 that Baltimore Sun Media was a finalist for a Pulitzer, considered journalism’s highest prize. The Pulitzer board awarded the staff of the Capital Gazette a special citation in 2019 for its coverage of the June 2018 attack on itsers.Annapolisof-butdisclosedlittleofthe fices that killed five colearnings. She took in over State lawmakers last year leagues. $300,000 more from other mandated several reforms
Already this year, the entities and individuals, at the University of MaryHealthy Holly coverage had portraying her sales of the land Medical System, inearned The Sun a George books for distribution to cluding requiring the resigPolk Award for political Baltimore children as a way nations of all board memreporting, a National Headthe organizations could give bers and mandating a state liner Award for investigative to the community. audit that found the hospital reporting and the News She resigned from the system had paid $115 million Leaders Association’s Al medical system board and to 27 board members and Neuharth Breaking News as mayor amid multiple their businesses. The scanReporting Award. investigations into her fidal led to the resignation of
The Sun initiated Pugh’s nances and the book sales. CEO Robert A. Chrencik downfall in March 2019, In total, she netted more and four other executives. when Broadwater revealed than $850,000, prosecutors Monday’s announcement that about a third of the said. At the same time, she was an unusual one for the appointed members of the failed to print thousands of 103-year-old Pulitzer orUniversity of Maryland copies, double-sold thouganization. Typically, the Medical System’s board had sands more and took many Pulitzer board announces business deals worth hunothers for self-promotion, the winners on an April dreds of thousands of according to prosecutors. afternoon at Columbia Unidollars with the hospital Investigators also uncovversity’s School of Journalnetwork. ered that she laundered ism, and journalists around
Among them was Pugh, illegal campaign contribthe country gather in their who had solicited UMMSto utions and failed to pay newsrooms to find out the enter a no-bid contract to taxes on her book income. winners via livestreaming. buy copies of her sloppily At the sentencing, U.S. This year, the announceself-published book series. District Judge Deborah K. ment was delayed two They aimed to promote Chasanow described Pugh’s weeks because of the coexercise and nutrition crimes as “astounding” and ronavirus pandemic. Pulitthrough the family life of a said she took advantage of a zer Prize Administrator young girl, Holly, and her career spent doing good Dana Canedy announced brother, Herbie. works to mislead organizathe winners Monday via
First as a state senator tions that paid for books. remote video feed from her and continuing beyond her Since The Sun uncovered home. Sun journalists, election as mayor in 2016, the misconduct, state and working out of their home Pugh collected $500,000 local leaders have instituted offices and basements, from the medical system for reforms requiring more learned of their win virtu100,000 copies of the books transparency from lawmak- ally, watching together via a video conference.
The announcement was good news amid the pandemic, which has wreaked financial havoc on the newspaper industry, among many others, as plummeting advertising led to pay cuts and furloughs at The Sun and other news outlets.
But the prize shows that local journalism is more important than ever, Broadwater said.
“If we’re not keeping eyes on the politicians and the powerful,” he said, “then who is?”
The Pultizers were first given in 1917, “less than a year before the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish Flu pandemic,” Canedy noted during the Monday announcement.
Since then, the 183-yearold Sun has won 16 Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2003 for medical reporter Diana K. Sugg’s beat reporting. Sugg is now a senior content editor for The Sun.
The Sun was a finalist in two categories, breaking news and editorial writing, in 2016 for its coverage and commentary of the rioting that followed the policecustody death of Freddie Gray.