Marshall Allen of the Las Vegas Sun writes Tuesday about how a reporter for the newspaper, Alexandra Berzon, won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about the high rate of construction deaths on the Strip that led to reforms.
“This was Berzon’s first newspaper staff job. She had come to the Sun from a technology publication and before that the graduate journalism program at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Berzon spent more than six weeks to prepare the first two stories in what would become a yearlong series of reports, slogging through the OSHA bureaucracy and ignoring threats of physical harm if she showed up at a union hall.
“‘I came to realize she had this combination of smarts and pugnaciousness,’ Heikes said. ‘She does not take no for an answer.’
“Before the Sun exposed the problems, construction safety had been a nonissue in Las Vegas. Worker deaths were considered the cost of doing business along the Strip, which was in the heat of a $32 billion building boom.”
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Alexandra won the Pulitzer because she is the best at what she does and what she does is so far beyond that of anything I've seen. One could only hope her passion and dedication as a journalist would spread through the journalistic community like a bushfire. And it is so wonderful to see her getting the recognition she truly deserves. The effect her efforts have had on the public's understanding of workplace fatalities and the failing system of compliance/prevention is remarkable. And the effect her efforts have had on those who have lived it.... Is beyond definition.
Mary Vivenzi
United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities