1978 Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prizes for 1978 are:

• Public Service:
  • The Philadelphia Inquirer, for a series of articles showing abuses of power by the police in its home city.
• Local General or Spot News Reporting:
  • Richard Whitt of the Louisville Courier-Journal, for his coverage of a fire that took 164 lives at the Beverly Hills Supper Club at Southgate, Kentucky, and subsequent investigation of the lack of enforcement of state fire codes.
• Local Investigative Specialized Reporting:
  • Anthony R. Dolan of the Stamford Advocate (Connecticut), for a series on municipal corruption.
• National Reporting:
  • Gaylord D. Shaw of the Los Angeles Times, for a series on unsafe structural conditions at the nation's major dams.
• International Reporting:
  • Henry Kamm of The New York Times, for his stories on the refugees, boat people, from Indochina.
• Commentary:
  • William Safire of The New York Times, for commentary on the Bert Lance affair.
• Criticism:
  • Walter Kerr of The New York Times, for articles on the theater in 1977 and throughout his long career.
• Editorial Writing:
  • Meg Greenfield, deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post, for selected samples of her work.
• Editorial Cartooning:
  • Jeffrey K. MacNelly of the Richmond News Leader.
• Spot News Photography:
  • John H. Blair, special assignment photographer for United Press International, for a photograph of an Indianapolis broker being held hostage at gunpoint by Anthony Kiritsis.

The prize-winning spot news photograph

The prize-winning set of feature photographs

• Feature Photography:
  • J. Ross Baughman of Associated Press, for three photographs from guerrilla areas in Rhodesia.

• Fiction:
  • Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• Drama:
  • The Gin Game by Donald L. Coburn (Drama Book Specialists)
• History:
  • The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (Belknap/Harvard University Press)
• Biography or Autobiography:
  • Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate (Harcourt)
• Poetry:
  • Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov (Univ. of Chicago)
• General Nonfiction:
  • The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan (Random House)
• Music:
  • Deja Vu for Percussion Quartet and Orchestra by Michael Colgrass (Carl Fischer Music)
    Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered by that orchestra October 20, 1977.

• Journalism:
  • Richard Strout, for distinguished commentary from Washington over many years as staff correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and contributor to The New Republic.
• Letters:
  • E. B. White, a special citation to E. B. White for his letters, essays and the full body his work.

• Pulitzer Prizes for 1978.