News photographer a Pulitzer finalist

News Staff

Tuesday, April 17, 2001

Rocky Mountain News photographer Marc Piscotty was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography awarded Monday.

Piscotty's entry was a selection of photos from the four-part series "ThunderRidge: Real Life at a Suburban High School."

PHOTO SLIDESHOW Click here to view a collection of Marc Piscotty's "Thunder Ridge" photos.

After the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, in an effort to report what life is really like at schools such as Columbine, he and a reporter spent the 1999-2000 school year at ThunderRidge High School in Highlands Ranch. Their work appeared in four special reports during the school year.

The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., won the category, its first Pulitzer, for Matt Rainey's photos documenting the care and recovery of two students burned in a dormitory fire at Seton Hall University. The Associated Press also was a finalist, for photos of North and South Koreans visiting relatives they had not seen in half a century.

"Such coveted recognition for Marc is indicative of the caliber of journalism done day in and day out at the News," said News Editor John Temple. "He made a real contribution to the community through his photography."

Last year the Rocky Mountain News won the Pulitzer for breaking news photography for its photos at Columbine after the shootings.

Piscotty, 30, who lives in Denver, joined the News in April 1999 after five years at The Albuquerque Tribune. Piscotty, a graduate of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, was born in Binghamton, N.Y., and grew up in Buffalo.

From the fall of 1999 to the spring of 2000, Piscotty averaged three days a week working on the ThunderRidge project. He says he shot more than 500 rolls of film.

He won the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for photojournalism, awarded earlier this month, for the ThunderRidge project.