The 30-Year Secret Revealed

April 4, 2005 12:34 PM

With this year's Pulitzer Prizes announced, the award for Investigative Reporting went to Nigel Jaquiss of Williamette Week, a Portland alternative newsweekly. Jaquiss' story revealed the "30-year Secret" that led to the downfall of one of Oregon's most influential politicians, helped foster a public backlash against corporate greed, and exposed a conspiracy of silence, favoritism, and scandal among the powerful in Oregon.
posted by ..ooOOoo....ooOOoo.. (13 comments total)

crap, first link should be Pulitzer Prizes.
posted by ..ooOOoo....ooOOoo.. at 12:36 PM on April 4, 2005

fixed the link. nice post.
posted by jessamyn at 12:57 PM on April 4, 2005

Whereas I've always enjoyed the Mercury's particular brand of humor, WWeek has always had a solid reputation for journalism, which IMO is what's kept them viable.
posted by iamck at 1:01 PM on April 4, 2005

I see that Marilynne Robinson won the Fiction prize. I hear very different reports on Gilead (from "very boring" to "very brilliant"). any readers here? opinions?

re poetry, I don't care much about Kooser, but he looks like a nice enough gentleman
posted by matteo at 1:26 PM on April 4, 2005

Congratulations to Nigel Jaquiss and Willamette Week. Most Oregonians did not know why bright young Neil Goldschmidt suddenly abandoned a promising political career. A man of ideas and action, he was mayor of Portland, governor of Oregon, U.S. Secretary of Transportation - then retired from public service.
His inability to discipline himself created a tragedy for him and his family and the young girl, but a loss for Oregon as well.
posted by Cranberry at 1:39 PM on April 4, 2005

But he was still so powerful after retiring. It seemed like nothing ever got done unless Goldschmidt was behind it.

I really like Gilead. Has anyone here read that Gass essay on the Pulitzer?
posted by underer at 2:10 PM on April 4, 2005

In other Portland Pulitzer news, Steve Suo and Erin Hoover Barnett of The Oregonian were finalists in the
National Reporting category for their "groundbreaking reports on the failure to curtail the growing illicit use of methamphetamines."
posted by twsf at 2:23 PM on April 4, 2005

Fascinating read.

The part I find most interesting about the Goldscmidt affair is the apparent inability to reconcile the two faces of the man. Willamette Week taking a break from its expose of his child molestation to remind us that he's a brilliant politician. The Oregonian struggling to find a way to break the story, arguing internally about their choice of the word "affair" to describe a young girl's rape.

It's odd to think that, if you do enough good, that even the most heinous of acts can be forgiven and even forgotten. The oddest part is that the good need not be penance for the wrongdoings. He could not regret a single minute, keep it to himself, and still get a civic center named after him.

Too much to wrap my head around.
posted by unsupervised at 2:26 PM on April 4, 2005

I was stunned by Nick Anderson's editorial cartooning. All of the examples they give are brilliant, as good as I've seen anyone summing up and lampooning a story in a single frame.

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2005/editorial-cartooning/works/
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:34 PM on April 4, 2005

From the sour grapes file: "I read a letter against the Willamette Week winning the Pulitzer Prize today in the office. It was written by the Editor of the Portland Mercury, Phil Busse."
posted by theonetruebix at 2:40 PM on April 4, 2005

Just a nod here for my colleague Jim MacMillan who spent the last year shooting for AP. He has several pieces in the winning entry, including this shot.
posted by sixpack at 2:57 PM on April 4, 2005

It is interesting that the Oregonian, the daily rag in Portland, which has tended Republican (albeit the moderate type that Oregon used to produce) had material on this issue and decided not to run with it, while left-leaning Willamette Week did, brilliantly.

I gathered from the coverage that the woman involved was at best ambivalent about the coverage. . .I hope that her life somehow gets better.
posted by Danf at 3:27 PM on April 4, 2005

See, in Canada, you can have sex with all the fourteen-year-old babysitters you want.

Although I imagine it all depends, when it hits the media...
posted by blacklite at 4:02 AM on April 5, 2005