The Buffalo News - Pulitzer Prizes

Pulitzer Prizes

Journalists for The Buffalo News and The Buffalo Evening News have won three Pulitzer Prizes. In 1958, Bruce Shanks received the Editorial Cartooning award for his August 10, 1957 piece, "The Thinker," detailing union corruption. In 1961, Edgar May received the Local Reporting award for his series, "Our Costly Dilemma," concerning the need for reform of New York State's welfare system. The series touched off debates about welfare reform nationwide. In 1990, Tom Toles brought the News its second Editorial Cartooning award, for his work throughout the year (although his piece "First Amendment" is often cited as the "exemplary" work that merited the award). (Toles currently serves as an editorial cartoonist with The Washington Post, where he replaced Herblock.) News journalists have been finalists for three other Pulitzer Prizes, but did not win: Toles (1985 and 1996, for Editorial Cartooning) and James Heaney (1993, for Investigative Reporting). Other journalists who won awards include Richard J. Burke a/k/a Dick Burke, who in 1972 won the New York State Associated Press Award for his series of articles about bicycling around Western New York.