Hearty congratulations to Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal editorial page for winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Distinguished Commentary. Ms. Rabinowitz is known to OpinionJournal readers for her "Media Log," as well as her longer features drawn from the pages of the Journal. Among readers of The Wall Street Journal, she is best known for her tireless reporting on false child-abuse prosecutions.
Many of the people about whom she's reported have since been freed, though Gerald Amirault (subject of "A Juror Has Second Thoughts" and "A Hearing in Boston," below) still languishes in a Massachusetts prison.
Ms. Rabinowitz joined the Journal in 1990 and became a member of its editorial board in 1996. She is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. This year, interestingly, she was not a finalist. Pulitzer Prize administrator Seymour Topping told the Associated Press yesterday that the Pulitzer board, which makes the final decisions, reviewed the jury's original three finalists and decided it wanted "a broader choice." The jury offered Ms. Rabinowitz as an alternate selection.
Thus, like the Baltimore Ravens, who failed to win their division but nevertheless crushed the New York Giants 34-7 in Super Bowl XXXV, Ms. Rabinowitz is the wild-card champion of opinion journalism.
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Articles that made up Ms. Rabinowitz's winning entry:
"A Candidate Who Can Stand Up to Gore," Feb. 3; "McCain's March," Feb. 25;
"Insurgency's End: Why They Love McCain," March 10; "A Juror Has Second Thoughts," May 12;
"A Doctor's Story," May 24; "A Hearing in Boston," Oct. 31; "The Campaign Speech You'll Never Hear," Nov. 7;
"University Days," Dec. 19; "Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Milken," Dec. 26; "Afterward," Dec. 29.