ST. PETERSBURG TIMES EARNS TWO PULITZER PRIZES FOR JOURNALISM
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HON. C. W. BILL YOUNG
of florida
in the house of representatives
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Speaker, The St. Petersburg Times earned
a rare honor Monday by collecting multiple Pulitzer Prizes for
journalism excellence. Washington Bureau Chief Bill Adair and his team won the only Pulitzer Prize awarded this year by Columbia University for content created for the web. They earned the honor in the National Reporting category for PolitiFact, a website at www.politifact.com conceived by Bill Adair to test the validity of political statements. Times Staff Writer Lane DeGregory won the second Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her story "The Girl in the Window", which is about a Plant City child who was locked in her room by her adoptive parents. This is a great honor for Paul Tash, the Editor, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of The St. Petersburg Times and his team of writers, editors, and support staff in this the newspaper's 125th year. Madam Speaker, following my remarks, I will include for the benefit of my colleagues a story from the Times by Stephen Nohlgren with more background on these awards and the six Pulitzer Prizes earned previously by St. Petersburg Times reporters and editors. The creation of PolitiFact will be of special interest to our colleagues in the House. The PolitiFact team, led by Bill Adair, included editors Scott Montgomery and Amy Hollyfield, reporter and researcher Angie Drobnic Holan, reporters Robert Farley and Alexander Lane, news technologist Matthew Waite and designer Martin Frobisher. Together they searched through political ads, speeches and debates and determined the accuracy of political statements by presidential candidates and candidates for other offices. The information is accessible and searchable on the internet and is also published in the Times. PolitiFact became such a valuable source of information during last fall's campaign season that it was quoted regularly by national news organizations. Madam Speaker, Please join me in congratulating Lane DeGregory, Bill Adair, and his team for a job well done in earning journalism's highest honor this week. They have set the standard for human interest and political reporting as judged by the peers in their field of work.