The Times’ 1942 Pulitzer Prize

The Los Angeles Times won its first Pulitzer Prize in 1942: the gold medal “for the most dis­in­ter­ested and mer­it­ori­ous pub­lic ser­vice of any Amer­ic­an news­pa­per in 1941 for its suc­cess­ful fight — which went to the United States Su­preme Court” — in a free­dom-of-the-press case. Top man­agers and ed­it­ors had been fined for be­ing in con­tempt of court for pub­lish­ing de­tails of on­go­ing court cases. In Bridges v. Cali­for­nia, the high court found that to be a vi­ol­a­tion of the First Amend­ment.

More about The Times’ Pulitzer Prizes through the years >>

On a front page dom­in­ated by news of World War II — “R.A.F. Blasts Nazis Again”; “Many From Los Angeles Lis­ted as War Cas­u­al­ties”; “Sug­ar Ra­tion Books Is­sued to Thou­sands” — The Times also ran two stor­ies about its award. Un­der the head­line “Court Marks End of Fight,” the pa­per re­coun­ted the four-year court battle’s end on the same day, co­in­cid­ent­ally, that the Pulitzer was awar­ded. An ed­it­or­i­al ac­cept­ing the ...

The Los Angeles Times pub­lished con­grat­u­lat­ory mes­sages it re­ceived from the news­pa­per­ing world. The New York Times called the Los Angeles Times a “de­fend­er of the free­dom of the press against ju­di­cial ar­rog­ance.”

From the art­icle: “From the trust­ees of Columbia Uni­versity in New York City The Times yes­ter­day re­ceived its dip­loma em­blem­at­ic of its Pulitzer Prize in journ­al­ism ‘for the most dis­in­ter­ested and mer­it­ori­ous pub­lic ser­vice rendered by an Amer­ic­an news­pa­per dur­ing the year 1941.’ “In peace­time the win­ner is presen­ted a gold medal, but be­cause of the war this cus­tom was dropped. Un­til vic­tory, at least, the hon­or must be in­dic­ated ...