For its trouble, downtrodden Detroit gets Pulitzer

DETROIT — Struggling simply to survive as readership and advertising drop, the Detroit Free Press celebrated winning a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for its reporting of a sex scandal that brought down the city's mayor.

Minutes before the Pulitzer was announced, most of the Free Press staff crowded into the close quarters around the cluttered corner desks of Jim Schaefer and M.L. Elrick, the main reporters on the story.

When Elrick, reading from a computer screen, announced, "It looks like we won," applause exploded and continued for nearly two minutes. Schaefer and Elrick hugged, as did other staffers.

"The community is in a better place now than it was a year ago, and although we take no joy in what Detroit had to go through, we take a lot of satisfaction that we did our job well," Paul Anger, Free Press vice president and editor, said in an interview. "We upheld the First Amendment. We upheld the public's right to know, and Detroit can move forward with confidence."

Schaefer and Elrick were the first to uncover steamy text messages between a married Kwame Kilpatrick, the mayor at the time, and Christine Beatty, his chief of staff.

Excerpts were first published in January 2008 and led to both being charged and eventually jailed. The reporting opened the door to intense scrutiny of Kilpatrick, his finances and the operations of the mayor's office.

The paper has not said how it obtained the messages, which revealed that Kilpatrick and Beatty lied about their affair under oath during a 2007 whistle-blowers' trial. The messages were left on Beatty's city-issued pager.

Following a short investigation, Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty in March 2008 with perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. Kilpatrick was required to leave the mayor's office after he pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and no contest to assault.

The award for local reporting is the ninth Pulitzer for the Free Press, and Elrick and Schaefer were elated to have been a part of it.

"This is something you want to do through your whole life — at least once you realize you want to be in newspapers," Elrick told the staff.

In an interview after the award was announced Monday, Schaefer said: "This whole thing has been a real emotional roller coaster ride for me, from extreme sadness for the city of Detroit to have to go through this, to joy when Kym Worthy charged the mayor."