Philip Merrill College of Journalism | University of Maryland

'92 Maryland Alum Wins Pulitzer Prize for Expose on Deaths of D.C. Children

For Immediate Release April 8, 2002

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A University of Maryland journalism alumna and part-time faculty member on Monday won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, less than 10 years after graduating from Maryland’s journalism program.

Sarah Cohen, a May 1992 master’s graduate of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and a frequent adjunct professor, was part of a three-person team from The Washington Post that won the Pulitzer for a series exploring the deaths of children in the District of Columbia.

Cohen, a computer-assisted reporting editor at The Post, along with reporters Scott Higham, who also is an adjunct professor at the College, and Sari Horwitz, discovered that 229 children died during a seven-year period after their dangerous family situations came to the attention of the District’s child protection system.

Despite strict confidentiality laws, the team pieced together records for 180 of those deaths and found that one in five - mostly infants and toddlers - lost their lives after government workers failed to take key preventive action or placed the children in unsafe homes or institutions.

"Sarah always had a powerful combination for a journalist - a nose for news and a head for numbers," said Professor Carl Sessions Stepp, who taught Cohen at Maryland. "She knows how to get information and then how to analyze it once she has it."

Cohen, of Kensington, Md., was among the first groups of students to participate in Maryland’s Capital News Service public affairs reporting program in Washington. She came to the University after serving as an economist in the U.S. Department of Labor.

After receiving her journalism master’s degree, Cohen became a business reporter at The Tampa Tribune and later The St. Petersburg Times before joining Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. as training director of the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting.

"It was no great surprise that Sarah won," said Professor Gene Roberts, a mentor to Cohen at Maryland and the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and managing editor of The New York Times. "She was an economist turned journalist, who almost immediately demonstrated that she had the ability, as well as the expertise, to do the job."

Cohen is the fourth College of Journalism graduate to win journalism’s highest honor, following two-time winner Jon Franklin, a 1970 graduate and now a faculty member at the College; Orlando Sentinel Editorial Page Editor Jane Healy, a 1971 graduate who now serves on the College’s Board of Visitors; and Newsday’s Patrick Sloyan, a 1962 graduate.

"Obviously we’re thrilled for Sarah, and we’re grateful, too, because for years our students have been benefiting from her remarkable expertise," said Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Merrill College of Journalism.

Monday’s award is the 37th Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, but its first in the investigative category, which was established in 1985.

The Post series also won two other prestigious journalism awards: the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the top prize from Investigative Reporters and Editors. "The project, which has resulted in wide-ranging reforms, answers the highest call of investigative journalism," the IRE Award judges said in granting the medal.

Manwhile, one of Cohen’s students at Maryland was a finalist in IRE’s student category.

Jennifer Dorroh’s investigation, written for the College’s Capital News Service and edited by CNS Washington Bureau Director Steve Crane, found that fewer than 10 percent of Maryland businesses that sold alcohol to minors have had their liquor licenses suspended or revoked.

Dorroh also discovered that less than 9 percent of the businesses that violated the state's liquor laws were forced to close temporarily. The investigation went on to show the system of penalties was uneven in most situations, with some businesses receiving fines from $100 to $5,000 while others were simply handed a letter of warning or a reprimand.

"Bar None" appeared in newspaper’s throughout Maryland last December. Dorroh, a master’s student, studied computer-assisted reporting under

For more information contact: Christopher Callahan, (301) 405-243