After Pulitzer win, reflections on why we do what we do

It was surprising to watch the tears flow Monday when it was announced that the South Florida Sun Sentinel had won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the most prestigious of the 14 Pulitzer prizes.

After all, the Sun Sentinel had won this honor in 2013 for a remarkable series of stories by Sally Kestin and John Maines about off-duty police officers who would drive their cruisers at 100, 120 or even 130 miles per hour. As a result of those stories, one officer was fired, some lost their takehome cars and more communities began using our methods — including Sun Pass tolls — to monitor how cops drive their take-home cars

But this time felt different. This time, the entry was a newsroom-wide mix of breaking news, investigative reports, photo storytelling, interactive journalism (with video and audio recordings) and editorials.

The award also stemmed from a horror unlike any our community has faced: the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 34 people were shot, 17 fatally.

It’s been a tough year, not only for Broward County, but for journalists.

We’ve heard our president call us the “enemy of the state.” We’ve mourned the deaths of five journalists at our sister paper in Annapolis. We’ve lost valued colleagues because of journalism’s changing business model. And in a community deeply divided over whether anyone — beyond the shooter — is to blame for what happened at Stoneman Douglas, we’ve been accused of refusing to “let the community heal.”

Perhaps it was Dana Canedy’s wind-up before announcing this year’s honorees that made so many of us weep. Canedy, the awards’ administrator, started with a video that highlighted our profession’s ideals: powerful, principled, meticulous, accurate, ethical, probing, balanced, illuminating and truth. She also noted that 63 journalists have been killed for doing their jobs this year, a 15 percent increase over last year.

“In their spirit, this year’s winning work reflects yet again a steely resolve in upholding the highest principles and ideals of this noble profession,” she said.

Canedy then broke with tradition to honor an entry “that did not win, but that should give us all hope for the future of journalism in this great democracy.

“The entry is from the staff of The Eagle Eye student newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which submitted the obituaries of 17 coaches and classmates, who were killed during a tragic shooting inside their school in February 2018 . ...

“These budding journalists remind us of the media’s unwavering commitment to bearing witness — even in the most wrenching of circumstances — in service to a nation whose very existence depends on a free and dedicated press.”

In the newsroom, we gathered together around a video screen to watch the livestreamed announcement. Joining us were colleagues from advertising, circulation and finance — people who make our journalism possible. With us, too, were our colleagues from sports, business, community news, the Jewish Journal and Prime magazine, who kept the enterprise running while some of us focused on investigative journalism.

Then, the announcement: ‘In the journalism category, for public service, the prize is awarded to the South Florida Sun Sentinel for exposing failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.”

On hearing our work recognized as the best of the best, Editor-in-chief Julie Anderson hugged Managing Editor Dana Banker, with hugs following all around. Later, we celebrated at Funky Buddha.

But it’s hard to celebrate when you remember that 14 children and three young adults were killed at their desks, in the hallways or while confronting the killer. Over the course of the year, we’ve also gotten to know their grieving families. We recognize that everyone connected to this horrific event will forever carry scars.

We’ve been accused of pursuing the Stoneman Douglas story for the sole purpose of winning a Pulitzer. A school board member even suggested we published inaccurate information to improve our chances. Perhaps that’s why it meant so much to hear Canedy talk about the winners having upheld the highest ideals.

The Sun Sentinel has vigorously pursued the Stoneman Douglas story for good reason. Our community must learn from what happened to keep such horror from happening again. But first, we need to know what happened.

Over the year, we’ve found so many things that went wrong and so many ways in which the shooter could have been stopped. If only the FBI had acted on the tips it received about a school shooter. If only the mental health system had not washed its hands of someone it surely knew was dangerous. If only the school district had listened to the alarm bells sounded by students and teachers. If only BSO deputies had gone beyond the routine on their 20-some trips to the shooter’s home. If only the flawed police radio system were finally fixed. And if only the school system had required that open gates be manned, that bathroom doors be kept unlocked and that people be better trained to assess threats and call a Code Red.

School officials suggest the district hasn’t gotten the credit it deserves for having made the safety improvements prescribed by the school board and the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act, including new security cameras, regular Code Red drills and more armed school resource officers.

A former school administrator, with input from the district’s public information office, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer Board, asking that the Sun Sentinel’s work not be honored. The letter accused us of being biased, unethical and racist. She said we refused to correct misinformation, failed to give voice to those who believe Superintendent Robert Runcie is doing an excellent job and prolonged the suffering of the families of the shooting victims.

As an example of unbalanced coverage, she noted our failure to follow up on a January press release that said “hard corners” — where students can hide out of sight from someone peering from the hallway — had been marked off at Stoneman Douglas over Christmas break. Perhaps we should have written about this safety feature having been added 10 months after the shooting. But what about the other 285 schools?

In writing and editing hundreds of articles, we’re not saying our coverage has never missed a step. But we quickly corrected errors pointed out and/or gave the district the opportunity to set the record straight.

Still, you can understand why relations are strained. Our reporting laid bare how the school district failed to deal with a violent, mentally disturbed student who became a mass murderer. We exposed a culture of leniency that every year wiped the slate clean for students with behavior problems. We revealed that inaccurate school crime reporting presented a false picture of safety from Miami to the Panhandle.

And despite endless promises of transparency, we reported that the district refused to release any public records pertaining to Stoneman Douglas for months after the shooting, hired a crisis-management expert whose motto was “stop talking” and tried to get our reporters thrown in jail.

“If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free, and many times adversarial, press.”

“Freedom of the press is one of our most important freedoms.” — Ronald Reagan

“The way to right wrongs it to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells

“News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.” — a number of famous newspapermen and women, including Katharine Graham, Washington Post publisher

We’ve got to believe that because of the light we have shined and will continue to shine, our school system will be stronger in the long term, with people better trained to handle the threat of active shooters.

We’ve got to believe law enforcement will be better trained to respond to active shooters.

But as of now, we can only hope our community mental health system will do more to prevent troubled kids from becoming active shooters.

It is our belief that Florida’s liberal gun laws and lack of funding for mental health care is a deadly mix.

And it’s an indictment of federal gun laws that the Pulitzer board this year commended the reporting on mass shootings in three cities — Parkland, Pittsburgh and Annapolis.

Of the many congratulatory messages we received after Monday’s announcement, two haunt us.

“Thank you … for uncovering the truth behind Alex’s murder. You have made us safer,” wrote Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son died on the first floor of the 1200 building.

Thank you, Max, but do you really think we’re safer? We believe another school shooting could happen again tomorrow.

And from Vickie Stanley, a former colleague in Tampa: “There’s not a day I don’t drop Nick off at school and don’t think about Parkland. Literally every time he steps out of the car, I think about those parents whose last moment with their child was that moment.”

Vickie, you speak for parents everywhere, who fear that when they drop their kid off at school, it could be for the last time.

A deep-seated fear about school and gun safety, not the light we shine, is what keeps our community from healing.

For the sake of the kids — and for those whose voices have been silenced — we will continue to follow the story of Stoneman Douglas.

A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy.” — Nelson Mandela