They held the story, and won the prize

[COMMENTARY]  How often has Columbia University bestowed its coveted Pulitzer Prize for national news reporting on reporters who DECLINED to publish a huge story?

At least once. It happened in the case of Clark Hoyt and Robert Boyd, who received the 1973 Pulitzer for their gumshoe work uncovering the psychiatric hospitalizations of then U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton.

Eagleton was a Democrat from Missouri who briefly was his party’s nominee for vice president in 1972. Eagleton’s ascent ended abruptly, brought down by Hoyt with help from Boyd. Who is Clark Hoyt? After a distinguished career with the Knight and Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers, today he’s public editor at The New York Times. He writes columns that judge the wisdom, ethics and intelligence of Times staffers.

The revelation that earned Hoyt and Boyd that 1973 Pulitzer? Hoyt confirmed a fact long-suppressed by media in Eagleton’s home town of St. Louis, Mo. — that Eagleton had suffered from depression. He’d been hospitalized three times and twice had received electro-shock therapy. Such a scoop might have prompted Eagleton to withdraw from the campaign had it been published by Hoyt and Boyd’s employer, the Knight chain of newspapers. We’ll never know what might have happened had Hoyt and Boyd actually beaten everybody with that story, because it never hit the streets. At least, not as a scoop for the Knight papers.

I became interested in this footnote in journalistic history while researching the background of Hoyt, whom I’ve taken to task a couple of times in my blog. I’ve criticized the critic for writing Times Op-Ed columns which, I think, harm the reputations of hardworking reporters and editors on the low end of the Times feeding chain. But I have to admit that he’s usually thorough, follows leads well below the surface and takes the top Times brass to task, too.

Still, it seems only fair that he who judges ought now and then to be judged. In this case, you might call it “Hoyt on his own petard.”

Continued -Recently, I was gearing up to write a searing column about Hoyt’s column on a recent Times embarrassment when I found myself accidentally wandering what seemed like a side path.

When I retired from the Detroit Free Press last year, I was given a copy of “On Guard” by Frank Angelo. It’s a history of the Free Press. As I thumbed through the book, the name Clark Hoyt jumped out at me.

Yes, the same Clark Hoyt who now works at the Times was, 30 years ago, employed at the Free Press. “Hoyt joined the Free Press in 1968 as politics writer and served later in the Knight Newspapers Washington bureau,” according to the book. “It was while he was in Washington that Hoyt, and bureau chief Bob Boyd, won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the history of mental illness of 1972 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton. That reporting was based on information supplied anonymously by telephone to John S. Knight III, a talented Free Press reporter who later became an editor at the Philadelphia Daily News and was murdered in late 1975. Boyd, a Free Press reporter before going to the Washington bureau, and Hoyt were awarded the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.”

I wondered if Hoyt and Boyd filched the tip from the other reporter, Knight. Nope. I’m told by an old Free Press hand that this young Knight was of the same Knight family that owned the Free Press, but he was an intern. Interns don’t normally follow up tips on national stories. And I learned that the tip was relayed to Hoyt on his way to St. Louis to look into the background of the relatively unknown first-term senator, Eagleton, after he was nominated for VP at the 1972 Democratic convention.

I find the language of “On Guard” interesting: Hoyt and Boyd won a Pulitzer for “uncovering the history of mental illness” of Eagleton. Doesn’t say they wrote a story.

For good reason. They didn’t. At least not right away.

Here’s how Eagleton’s obit in the March 5, 2007, New York Times put it: After the convention, “rumors began circulating among politicians and journalists. Mr. Eagleton held a news conference on July 25 in Custer, S.D., where he had just briefed the vacationing Mr. McGovern over breakfast.”

Not exactly how it happened. It wasn’t rumors that forced Eagleton out.

It was Pulitzer Prize-winning news reporting.

Seems Hoyt took the intern’s tip and used it to guide his reporting in St. Louis. He started reading newspaper clips about Eagleton and found gaps — periods when the politician, normally in the news, suddenly disappeared. He kept digging and found references to hospitalizations — and a physician’s name. When Eagleton’s doctor slammed his door in Hoyt’s face, the reporter knew he was onto to something big.

Why didn’t he write and publish it?

Maybe he wishes he had. But I don’t think so.

Hoyt and Boyd had evidence that a potential vice president — a man within reach of the presidency — suffered from periodic bouts of depression severe enough to require hospitalization. Maybe not so problematic for a U.S. senator, but certainly worth concern in a man who could set off a nuclear inferno. At that level, it’s political — no longer just between his doctor and the senator.

The reporters had the story and could have written and published it. They were at that moment where they needed, out of fairness to Eagleton, to let him know what they had and give him a chance to respond.

Think of the temptation: They had a really hot story — as it turned out, a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Why not just go with what they had?

Ever see those disclaimers in news stories that say the subject didn’t return a phone call for comment? Hoyt and Boyd could have placed a call to Eagleton shortly before deadline and then run a story breaking the news and saying there was no word from Eagleton by press time. Who could reproach them? They’d have had their scoop.

I learned from a column by Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher what happened.

It seems they recognized the gravity of the story and its potential impact. This was about more than competition among media.

They weren’t taking shortcuts. They learned Eagleton and presidential candidate George McGovern were staying at a log cabin resort in South Dakota. Hoyt and Boyd traveled there found the resort, located the campaign manager and unloaded their bad news. Eagleton, it turned out, hadn’t leveled with McGovern and the story was a big shock to him. Eagleton called a press conference. The beans were spilled. Everybody, not just Hoyt and Boyd, had the story.

Eagleton tried to hang in, but withdrew a few days later under pressure from McGovern.

And now I have a request for the public editor of The New York Times. The Times needs to run a correction to their obituary on Thomas Eagleton. “Rumors” were not what pushed the senator to withdraw. It was the force of truth, well and thoroughly reported by Hoyt and Boyd and presented fairly to the nominee.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com