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GULFPORT, Miss. - The Sun Herald of Gulfport, Miss., was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Monday for its work in covering Hurricane Katrina.
The Pulitzer board and jurists awarded the gold medal for public service to the Sun Herald and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. The awards were announced in a 3 p.m. EDT bulletin by The Associated Press.
The Sun Herald also was a finalist in editorial writing.
Executive Editor Stan Tiner dedicated the public service prize to the people of South Mississippi "who will not be defeated."
According to the Pulitzer Web site, more than 2,000 entries are submitted each year in the Pulitzer Prize competitions, and only 21 awards are normally made.
The Sun Herald's entry for public service journalism centered on the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, from the time the storm was named and entered the Gulf of Mexico.
As the powerful storm bore down on the Gulf Coast, the paper kept four reporters in the newsroom, while four staff members - assistant city editor Blake Kaplan and designers Rudy Nowak, Paul Hampton and Jared Head - were sent to Columbus, Ga., in the event an alternate printing site was needed. (It was. The paper was printed at the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus for more than a week before publishing in Mississippi again).
In addition, reporter Don Hammack was in place at the Emergency Operations Center in Gulfport, where he served as a blogger for the Sun Herald's Web site. The blog was a vital link of information to people who did not have any other means of communication with South Mississippi.
Knight Ridder, the company that owns the Sun Herald, also had editors, reporters, photographers and other personnel in place to come in and help as soon as it was safe to do so.
Sun Herald staffers, despite personal losses, and those loaned from other Knight Ridder newspapers worked tirelessly to provide up-to-date information for Sun Herald readers. Through the printed version and the online edition, the Sun Herald provided news of damage, how to contact loved ones, where to find shelter and basic necessities and where to go for other help.
Photographers provided photos of the devastation that helped boost traffic by as many as 1.5 million visitors to the Web site in the days following Katrina's landfall.
The Sun Herald continues to provide information readers need to recover from the hurricane - from navigating insurance and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Small Business Administration loans and Community Development Block Grant applications.
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(c) 2006, The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
