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Fake & Innaccurate: No 'Shared' Pulitzers for LAT's Kevin Roderick

By Jacob S. Lybbert | August 22, 2008 | 16:11

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Sometimes simply adding the link to our Editors' Picks sidebar just isn't enough. First reported by Luke Ford and confirmed by ERS News, it looks like LA Observed's Kevin Roderick's didn't actually share two Pulitzer Prizes after all.

You see, there's sharing and then there's sharing. In the first sense, we all "shared" in Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor's Olympic Gold medal. In the second sense, the U.S. women's gymnastics team all shared the team's silver medal.

In 1993 and 1995, the Los Angeles Times "staff" won Pulitzers for the LA riots and the Northridge earthquake, respectively. The Pulitzer awards committee names "staff" as the recipient when contributors number more than three. With a dozen stories listed and over two dozen credited reporters and photographers, the LA Times's Pulitzers were awarded to "Staff," meaning the 25 or so credited participants. Roderick certainly "shares" the Pulitzer in the second sense, that it redounds to the good of the entire LAT, but in purely official terms--you know, the ones that make it alright to claim it on your resume--Roderick did not share the Pulitzers.

Per ERS News,

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.

In all the official submissions and awards for both Pulitzers, Roderick is not named as a contributing writer, photographer or otherwise, anywhere. As ERS points out, he has a much claim to the Pulitzer as "the person running the parking lot or the guard at the front door."

These are the types of things where anyone who was even vaguely associated with the reporting and producing of a story will do whatever they can to get their name in the big official submission. Judging from the entry form, it looks as though lots of LA Times writers did just that. Unfortunately for Kevin Roderick, he did not make the cut and did not officially share in the LA Times's Pulitzers in 1993 and 1995.