Why I hate the Pulitzers

The most obvious reason is that I don’t have one. But, beyond that, as the names of the winners came down the wires this afternoon, the most deserving writer for beat journalism, or explanatory writing, or public service (take your pick) was not among them. He is Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times. I don’t know Taugher, but I could pick out a story by him without the byline. He is the reporter who is invariably at the edge of what can be known about water in northern California. His series on the two richest, most wildly entitled fixers in the state’s water politics opened the door to subsequent profiles of Lynda and Stewart Resnick by the New York Times and, only this weekend, the Associated Press. But Taugher was there first, with a shovel doing the hardest digging. The upshot? Among other things, without Taugher’s reporting in 2009,

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    Emily Green by e-mail at emily.green [at] mac.com
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