Former Tri-City Herald reporter wins Pulitzer

A former Tri-City Herald reporter won a Pulitzer Prize in local reporting as part of a team at the Tampa Bay Times.

Cara Fitzpatrick worked at the Herald from 2003-05 covering the city, county, police and fire beats. She joined the Tampa Bay Times in 2012.

She shares the Pulitzer with her husband, Michael LaForgia, and Lisa Gartner, also of the Tampa Bay Times, for “Failure Factories,” a series that studied the effects on education in Pinellas County, Florida, when schools in poor neighborhoods were essentially desegregated and neglected.

While at the Tri-City Herald she won first place for investigative reporting for “911 Disconnect,” a series of stories about problems with Tri-Cities’ emergency dispatch system, in the Society of Professional Journalists Inland Northwest Excellence in Journalism contest and second place for watchdog reporting in the Society of Professional Journalists Region 10 Excellence in Journalism contest, both in 2006.

She’s a University of Washington and Columbia University graduate.

To read the “Failure Factories” stories, go to www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/pinellas-failure-factories/.

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Former Tri-City Herald reporter wins Pulitzer."