April 17, 2007

The Dalles grad part of Pulitzer team
Quinton Smith coordinated reports on the Kim family rescue efforts

By RODGER NICHOLS
of the Chronicle

     PORTLAND — A graduate of The Dalles High School helped lead the team that Monday won a Pulitzer Prize for The Oregonian for covering and investigating the search for a San Francisco family lost in the of the wilds of Southern Oregon.
     Quinton Smith, a graduate of The Dalles High School’s class of 1968, was the coordinating team leader for Kim Family search coverage.
     The search ended Dec. 6 with the discovery of the body of James Kim, an online editor, who died of hypothermia after trying to hike from his stranded car for help. His wife and two daughters, who stayed with the car, were rescued two days earlier.
     As part of the coverage, The Oregonian reported that government agency workers left open a gate to the logging road the Kims took by mistake, and it concluded that the search was marked by a lack of coordination and a failure to act quickly on such information as a “ping” from the family’s cell phone.
     The paper’s major investigation of the search revealed what a “botched” rescue operation was mounted, Executive Editor Peter Bhatia told the staff assembled Monday in the newsroom.
     The award cited the work of The Oregonian both in print and online.
Editors and staff members noted the breadth of reporting tools The Oregonian used. They included breaking news, profiles, investigative pieces, photos and graphics in the newspaper and such Web-based devices as a virtual re-creation of the family’s journey _ an attempt near the end of a Thanksgiving holiday trip to take a back road leading from Interstate 5 through the mountains to Oregon’s coast.
     “I think this is the new model of what news needs to be,” Editor Sandy Rowe said during an interview as her staff pressed by her to the tables where glasses of champagne had waited through a half-hour award ceremony.
     Staff members said they were mindful of Kim’s death. They said they hoped their work would help Oregonians get better at such high-profile searches.
     “The Kims lost a husband and a father here,” said Quinton Smith, an editor who coordinated much of the coverage. “Hopefully, our investigation into that will help improve things.”
     The Pulitzer, the most prestigious award in American journalism, was the paper’s seventh, dating to 1939, and fifth in the last decade. Editorial writers Rick Attig and Doug Bates won a Pulitzer last year for work on the state’s aged mental hospital.
     Two other Oregonian entries were among the Pulitzer finalists this year:
     — In feature writing, Inara Verzemnieks for what the judges called “witty and perceptive” features on such topics as a couple and their museum for velvet paintings and the development of the maraschino cherry industry in Oregon.
     — In national reporting, Les Zaitz, Jeff Kosseff and Bryan Denson for disclosing “mismanagement and other abuses in federally subsidized programs for disabled workers, stirring congressional action.”
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On the Net:
The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com
The Pulitzer Prizes: http://www.pulitzer.org