ERS NEWS. The Enterprise Report

HAPPY TURKEY-DAY 2008 FROM
ERSNEWS / THE ENTERPRISE REPORT!

UPDATE

FORMER LA TIMES EDITOR
TURNED BLOGGER

WHO CLAIMED
PULITZER PRIZES
HE NEVER
WON OR SHARED

AWARDED
JOURNALISM PRIZE FOR
“NEW MEDIA” WORK BY SOCIETY
OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
IN LOS ANGELES

By ERSNews

(Nov 27th, 2008 8:00AM PST)

Kevin Roderick, well known blogger, news aggregator and still sometime journalist, who publishes the Los Angeles based blog LAObserved has been named the recipient of a distinguished journalist prize by the Society of Professional Journalists, Los Angeles Chapter

The award, according to a press release issued by the LA Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists yesterday states that the award “is given to a journalist who uses the new media’s unique characteristics and capabilities while striving to uphold traditional journalism’s highest standards of honesty, accuracy, responsibility and accountability.”

The Board of Directors of the SPJ-LA is responsible for selecting the award winners. The current board contains two current Los Angeles Times reporters.

ERSNews was first to confirm and expose LAObserved/Roderick’s false Pulitzer claims earlier this year. Roderick had claimed to have “shared” in the winning of two Pulitzer Prizes in 1993 and 1995 while working for the Los Angeles Times. Those claims are nowhere to be found in the SPJ-LA Press release, but Roderick continues to make the false claim on his current bio on LAObserved.

ERS thinks the public should take another look at our exclusive investigative story from last August (see below) and judge for themselves how well Roderick has upheld “traditional journalism’s highest standards of honesty, accuracy, responsibility and accountability. As our reporting clearly proves, we beg to differ with the assessment of the SPJ-LA.

We here at ERS understand very clearly that the public is whom journalists and journalism organizations should be concerned and accountable to in these “dark days” for our profession. We think the public’s view of journalists and their credibility is a much higher calling than the self congratulatory nature of professional journalists giving each other awards, deserving or not.

EXCLUSIVE

LAOBSERVED.COM AND ITS
"BOGUS"

PULITZER PRIZE
"SHARING" EDITOR

By ERSNews

(Aug 12th, 2008 9:30AM PST)

In April 2008, Los Angeles blogger and Internet muckraker Luke Ford posted an item claiming that one of Los Angeles’s major bloggers, Kevin Roderick who founded and writes LAObserved.com, may have on fudged his claim of sharing two Pulitzer Prizes.

Roderick, a former LA Times editor has long claimed that he “shared” in the winning of two Pulitzer Prizes when he worked at the Los Angeles Times. Roderick’s bio on his web sites and that of other media outlets he contributes to, like LA talk radio station KCRW, make that precise claim.

On his own LAObserved.com website Roderick states that ... “He shared in two Pulitzer Prizes awarded for staff coverage of the Rodney King riots and the Northridge earthquake."

Turns out Roderick’s claims are false.

ERS News checked the claims made by Roderick of “sharing” in the winning of The Pulitzer. We contacted Columbia University, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prize awards. The awards are widely considered the most prestigious awards for print journalism in the world.

The facts, uncovered by ERS, show that Roderick’s claim to having been awarded or at the very least having “shared” in receiving a Pulitzer Prize are false and misleading.

The Enterprise Report obtained the Pulitzer award submissions made by the LA Times in 1993 and 1995, the two years that Roderick claims to have “shared” in the prizes. The submissions, submitted and signed by then LA Times editor Shelby Coffey are here for you to read.

The 1993 Pulitzer for “spot news reporting” was awarded to the LA Times for its coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. The submission itself has a long list of stories and the specific names of reporters and photographers who contributed to the published articles that were given the Pulitzer award.

Kevin Roderick’s name does not appear anywhere on the submission that won the award.

The same holds true for the 1995 Pulitzer awarded to the Times for its coverage of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

The submission for the earthquake coverage award contains 12 different stories, with the specific names of over 25 bylined reporters and photographers who contributed to the articles submitted and awarded the Pulitzer. You can view the stories here:

Once again, Roderick’s name is nowhere to be found.

According to the rules of the Pulitzer Prize, when an award entry contains more than three named journalists, the award is given in the name of the “staff” of the publication.

The use of the term “staff” could be interpreted loosely to mean anybody who was working for the LA Times in 1993 and 1994 when the stories were published.

Therefore anybody, including former LA Times editor Roderick could make the claim to having “shared” in winning the Pulitzer Prize award.

ERS spoke with Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He told ERS News that the intention of the awards is to acknowledge the actual journalists whose work is submitted in consideration for the award, by name in the category entered. It is not intended to allow anyone working for the publication at the time to claim that they are Pulitzer Prize winners. If that was not the case anybody working at the LA Times during that time period could make the same false claim of having “shared” in the winning of journalism's most prestigious prize; any reporter or editor, or even to the person running the parking lot or the guard at the front door.

When questioned about the discrepancy in early 2008 after Luke Ford published his claim that Roderick had not actually won a Pulitzer Prize, Roderick told LA based blogger Daivd Markland:

“Unlike the individual Pulitzers, on staff ones they give awards to all the writers and editors who had key roles on the stories — probably more than 50 in these cases. They don’t inscribe names on any Pulitzer trophies, I don’t think, but certainly not on staff ones. The plaques we all received for spot reporting in 1992 and 1994 are nice 5 x 7 inch lucite-type rectangles, with a replica of the front page embedded inside, and some wording about the prize at the bottom. I’m looking at my two right now — very dusty, but otherwise sort of nice looking. You can come over and see them anytime.”

Roderick also attacked Ford’s assertions when asked about his (Ford’s) motivation in publishing the allegations about his Pulitzer claims by saying

(Question by David Markland) .. “Do you know what Luke Ford’s motivation was for bringing this up now?”

I have no idea what Luke Ford’s motivation is for posting something so unresearched and clearly erroneous”

Turns out Luke Ford was 100% accurate about Kevin Roderick’s false claims of winning a Pulitzer Prize.

Roderick’s name is nowhere on the long list of stories, of LA Times journalists credited and bylined which were awarded the Pulitzer in 1993 and 1995 for Spot News Reporting.

Roderick even took his false claims a step further after being exposed by Blogger Ford. He implies that a plaque he and others received from the LA Times at the time, was awarded by the Pulitzers.

The plaque Roderick is referring to when answering blogger Markland’s question, is NOT a Pulitzer Prize award. It is a plaque handed out by the paper itself. Another former LA Times reporter named Mack Reed, who worked at the LA Times during the same period, read Roderick’s claims about being a Pulitzer winner.

He had this to say about Roderick’s less than accurate claims.

Mack Reed (mackreed) April 4th, 2008 3:40 pm
Hell, I worked on both those "Pulitzer" teams (riots and Northridge quake), and even have nice plexiglass paperweights issued by the Times to show for it. OTOH, I never list it on my resume because I was one of about 75 staffers who covered those ongoing events.

The plaque given out by the Pulitzer Prizes in 1995 was accepted by an LA Times editor at the time. A photo of the award being accepted can be seen here.

In an interview with LA website “LAist” shortly after the questions were raised about his claims of winning a Pulitzer Prize, Roderick admitted that the only thing he did to contribute to the award winning work done by dozens of other LA Times reporters and photographers credited with the award in 93 and 95 was the following:

“While I was an editor on the state desk, I participated in helping direct the coverage first of the L.A. riots in 1993 and then the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Those both won staff Pulitzer Prizes.”

Although The Pulitzer Prizes award a myriad of awards in variety of categories, some of which have changed over the years, they don’t award the prestigious journalistic prize for “directing coverage” or to news editing. So it seems one of LA’S leading bloggers has some questions to answer about his Pulitzer claims.

Submit this story to: