Best of Cleveland 2003
People & Places
Best Story Not to Win a Pulitzer
"Burden of Innocence" by Connie Schultz
Besides telling the heartbreaking saga of a man wrongly convicted of rape, Schultz's five-part series in The Plain Dealer last fall compelled the real perp to come forward and confess -- and she still didn't win journalism's biggest prize. Can you say "robbed," boys and girls? The snub may rank as the Pulitzer Board's worst mistake since awarding a prize to Stalin apologist Walter Duranty in 1932. Exhaustively researched and emotionally charged, Schultz's opus chronicled the nightmare lived by Michael Green, who served 13 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. True, the series has bagged a truckload of other awards. But even we'll admit that a Best of Cleveland plaque doesn't quite measure up to a Pulitzer.
