The Mechanic & the Muse: Digging deep in San Jose

Reporting

"Made in the Shade"
A package on Southern writers: profiles, interviews and an 11-state directory of writers you may never have heard of but are worth your time. Appeared in Creative Loafing chain.
"Mass Appeal"
A day-in-the-life profile of a telegenic parish priest in Miami. Published in Catholic Digest, reprinted in the St. Petersburg Times
"The Liberation of Tam Minh Pham"
How the first West Point graduate from South Vietnam disappears after the fall of Saigon, only to be rescued by his classmates two decades later. A cover story in The Washington Post Magazine

Many of you, like me, have read about this already in Romenesko, but I wanted to make sure to bookmark the San Jose Mercury News investigative series, "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice" (registration required but it works for all Knight Ridder papers) produced by a team led by Rick Tulsky, who shared a 1987 Pulitzer at the Philadelphia Inquirer for a probe disorder in that city's court system.

Given the exhaustive attention to detail as evident in its online package, and the attention the work is getting, along with the Pulitzer board's acceptance of online content in submissions, I'd expect the package to be in the running next year.

Married to online's tools, such as this Flash presentation of cases, the cross-platform presentation may have its greatest impact online.

In any case, it's the kind of public service journalism (go to the Pulitzer site and search by category)that Knight Ridder used to be famous for, and the reason I was so proud to work for the chain in its Washington Bureau for 5 years in the early 90s.

A side note: Given the dismaying news coming from KR's business side, it's also heartening to see the valuable work on the Iraq war that's emerged from the Washington Bureau.