With all the bombast going on in the Maine Senate race, the strangeness of Washington, D.C., the not really a war in the Middle East, and our local town meetings and elections, last week Columbia University  awarded the Pulitzer prizes.

In the news/scribbling biz, what is left of it, they are big deals, really big deals.

Of course, the big boys pulled in the goodies, like the NY Times, Washington Post, Reuters and AP. They awarded a special citation to Julie K. Brown, the Miami reporter who first introduced us to Jeffrey Epstein and his peccadillos. Bully for them and Ms. Brown.

But way down the Pulitzer Prize list was the CT Mirror, an online news service in Hartford. Working with ProPublica, they “exposed the lax standards and predatory practices that allowed the towing industry to victimize people who live from paycheck to paycheck.”

The work of reporters Dave Altikmari and Ginny Monk led the legislature to “overhaul laws that allowed towing companies to sell cars as soon as 15 days after they were towed.” And, of course, the towing companies pocketed the proceeds.

Now for the rest of the story, right? Altimari got a tip from a Connecticut DMV, and Monk heard from apartment renters. Towing companies were taking cars from apartment complexes for minor infractions, like expired parking stickers. In 15 days, they could and did sell the towed cars. When they asked the DMV for paperwork that allowed the towing companies to sell the cars, the DMV bureaucrats agreed,  if the CT Mirror would pay $47,000 for the public records. After a press lawyer got involved, they erased the charge.

And the CT Mirror reporters got the DMV to admit it failed to enforce a 100-year-old law that protected the owners of the towed cars. That law required towing companies to hold the money they received from selling the towed cars for a year so the original owners could claim the money, minus the fees owed for towing and storage. The state treasurer’s office audited the towing deposits and found out, surprise,  no tow truck company or the DMV had ever turned over the deposits to the original owners.

The reporters, aided by their colleagues, had to do a lot of work to discover and verify that the DMV and towing companies were scamming the public.

The towing scam was not an important national or worldwide story. It might never run on MSNOW, Fox, the WarRoom, and the rest of the outlets featuring blow-dried anchors. But it made an impact on the local guys who walked out of their apartment to find their car was missing. The little CT Monitor did just what reporters in outlets big and small are supposed to do. Discover the facts, verify them, and let their readers know what is going on in their own backyards.

It is no secret that the press in general is under attack. Politicians and others in power, whether they wear uniforms, business suits, or cassocks, would rather we write stories praising their pet projects. And they would rather we avoid stories that criticize them.

Not long ago, our friends at the Boston Globe were attacked when they started looking into reports of clergy abuse. On most days, POTUS himself and his cabinet attack and sue the press for anything they don’t like.

Those of us in the news biz proclaim that local news matters. We are in a shrinking industry. In the last two decades, we have lost 40% of all U.S. newspapers. In some cases, online news sites have sprouted, like the ones we provide to our readers, allowing those who get their information online to sample local topics.

Thanks to the Pulitzer committee for honoring the online CT Monitor, the little guys. We join with them, offering the CT Monitor a pat on the back from another local news source.

All over the nation, and in our hometown, reporters sit through hundreds of boring meetings of planning boards, selectboards, appeals boards, school committees and bodies providing water and sewage. We check with the cops and firefighters, too.

When we don’t quite understand what is going on, we ask questions that officials would rather avoid, especially the questions that begin with the word why. Like, “Why did you ..."

In closing, I am reminded of the quip from an old editor: “When there are no traffic cops, everybody speeds.”

Til next time.