At Monday’s Council meeting, the Seattle City Council issued a proclamation commending the Seattle Times on earning the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, the profession’s top national prize, for coverage of breaking news.
The Times award-winning coverage began immediately following murders of four Parkland, Wa., police officers on Sunday, Nov. 29. It was Thanksgiving weekend and the Times newsroom had only one editor and one reporter on duty.
The Times’ news team quickly grew to involve dozens of reporters who were able to keep the community reliably informed on the search for the gunman. Eventually, their work culminated in an amazing 3,700 word profile on the prime suspect on the following Sunday, just one week later.
The newspapers’ coverage was amazingly comprehensive and particularly noteworthy in these difficult times. Like newspapers across the land, the Times has been adversely impacted by declining revenue and adverse economic conditions. Nevertheless, the paper continues to maintain its journalistic excellence as a family-owned paper in an era of media conglomerates.
It was with a sense of local pride that the council delivered the proclamation recognizing the Seattle Times achievement, even though in the words of Editor David Boardman, who accepted the proclamation, the newspaper will continue to cover local government in its unbiased adversarial role. One would expect no less.
