The Pulitzer record: a finalist born here, an empty line for the paper

2004

The paper's line, empty: The South Bend Tribune, the city's newspaper since the nineteenth century, holds no Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer record carries no win for the paper and no named finalist; the city's journalism has been honored nationally in other currencies — the Tribune's Elkhart police series, produced with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network and published in 2018–19, was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, which is Harvard's prize, given by the Shorenstein Center, and not a Pulitzer. The two are confused often enough in retelling that the ledger prints the distinction on purpose. The series' ProPublica reporter, Ken Armstrong, is a Pulitzer winner — on other newspapers' work, in other cities; the prize is his, and it is not the Tribune's.

The person's line: The one name the Pulitzer record gives this city belongs to a novelist, at finalist strength. Susan Choi, born in South Bend in 1969 and raised here and in Houston, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her second novel, American Woman (2003), her reimagining of the Patty Hearst kidnapping's fugitive aftermath. The prize that year went to Edward P. Jones for The Known World; the other finalist was Marianne Wiggins's Evidence of Things Unseen. Choi's larger honors — above all the National Book Award for Fiction she won in 2019 for Trust Exercise — stand in the Famous People and Authors records of this history; the ledger entry here is the Pulitzer line itself: a finalist, born here, in 2004. No Pulitzer winner was born, raised, or formed in South Bend.

A clarification the record owes: The comic strip Zits, whose masthead carries a Pulitzer, is co-created by a South Bend native — Jerry Scott, the strip's writer, was born in this city — but the Pulitzer on that masthead is not his and not this city's. It belongs to the strip's artist, Jim Borgman of Cincinnati, who won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning at The Cincinnati Enquirer, years before Zits began. The birth is South Bend's; the prize is Cincinnati's; the ledger keeps them apart.

Sources:

1. The Pulitzer Prizes, finalist record — Susan Choi, American Woman, finalist in Fiction, 2004 (pulitzer.org); the winner Edward P. Jones, The Known World, and finalist Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen.
2. Yale University, Susan Choi faculty record — "Pulitzer Finalist (American Woman), 2004"; the South Bend birth and upbringing stand in the Famous People section of this history.
3. Poynter, "2019 Pulitzer Preview" (15 April 2019), and The Indiana Publisher, March 2019 — the Tribune–ProPublica Elkhart series as a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize of Harvard's Shorenstein Center; Armstrong identified as a Pulitzer winner assisting from Seattle.
4. The Pulitzer Prizes, winner record — Jim Borgman of The Cincinnati Enquirer, Editorial Cartooning, 1991; publisher biographies of Jerry Scott for the South Bend birth.