By Michael Miner
“Abner Louima trembled in his hospital bed yesterday as his wife, Micheline, touched his cheek and wept. A plastic tube ran from his torn bladder into a plastic bag. His urine was red.
In the view of the Daily News, the Louima story belonged to its man and no other. McAlary won the Pulitzer, his paper reported, “for exposing the Abner Louima police torture scandal….McAlary introduced New Yorkers to a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant whose allegations of police brutality rocked the city….McAlary followed the exclusive with days of dogged reporting and columns about the scandal.”
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Describing the tumultuous celebration in its newsroom, the Daily News went on to say, “It was the paper’s second Pulitzer in three years. Columnist E.R. Shipp, a winner in 1966, looked on as McAlary gave his emotional speech.”
If the commentary jury had had its way, chances are the winner would have been the Chicago Tribune’s Bob Greene. Rumor had him winning the award, and if rumor had held up you might at this moment be reading BobWatch. “Ed Gold” had heard the rumor too, and he was cranking up his own tribute to Greene’s victory. But the Pulitzer was snatched (not for the first time) from Greene’s waiting hands.
The jury eventually picked syndicated columnist Robert Samuelson and the Boston Globe’s Patricia Smith, a former Sun-Times feature writer best remembered in Chicago as the queen of the Poetry Slam. Forbidden by the Pulitzer rules to indicate a preference, the jury submitted the names of Greene, Samuelson, and Smith, listed alphabetically, to the board. But rather than honor Greene or Samuelson or Smith, the board found its winner in McAlary, who’d reached the finals in breaking news reporting.
“I’m not sure I’m the one to say that,” he said, and laughed. “There’s a certain feeling you did a lot of stuff for nothing.”
