Big year for business journalism in Pulitzers

Four winners and five finalists of the Pulitzer Prizes announced Monday are forms of business journalism, from investigative pieces to commentary to editorial writing about business and economics news and issues.

It’s the best showing for business journalism in the history of the awards. According to this list, there has never been more than one business journalism winner in one year. (There is no business journalism category.)

Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune won in the investigative reporting category for her series of stories on problems of the Florida property insurance industry. St. John e-mailed Talking Biz News on Monday afternoon to say she’s “just trying to stay sober at the moment!”

The judges lauded her series for “for her examination of weaknesses in the murky property-insurance system vital to Florida homeowners, providing handy data to assess insurer reliability and stirring regulatory action.” St. John discussed her series, which also won a National headliner Award and a National Journalism Award, with Talking Biz News last month.

Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica won in the national reporting category for their exposure of questionable practices on Wall Street that “contributed to the nation’s economic meltdown, using digital tools to help explain the complex subject to lay readers,” according to the judges.

Finalists in the category were David Evans of Bloomberg News for his revelations of how life insurance companies retained death benefits owed to families of military veterans and other Americans, leading to government investigations and remedial changes; and The Wall Street Journal staff for its examination of the disastrous explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, using detailed reports to hold government and major corporations accountable.

Business section columnist David Leonhardt of the New York Times won in the commentary category for “his graceful penetration of America’s complicated economic questions, from the federal budget deficit to health care reform.”

Joseph Rago of The Wall Street Journal won in the editorial writing category for his “well crafted, against-the-grain editorials challenging the health care reform advocated by President Obama.”

In addition, Bloomberg News was a finalist in the public service category for the work of Daniel Golden, John Hechinger and John Lauerman that “revealed how some for-profit colleges exploit low-income students, leading to a federal crackdown on a multi-billion-dollar industry.”

The Journal was also a finalist in the explanatory reporting category for “its penetration of the shadowy world of fraud and abuse in Medicare, probing previously concealed government databases to identify millions of dollars in waste and corrupt practices.”

And it was a finalist in the international reporting category for “its examination of the causes of Europe’s debt crisis, taking readers behind closed doors to meet pivotal characters while illuminating the wider economic, political and social reverberations.”

See all of the winners and finalists here.

Last year, there was one business journalism Pulitzer winner, the New York Times, in the national reporting category, and four finalists — the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Leonhardt of the New York Times.