William J. Coughlin, who led small North Carolina newspaper to a Pulitzer, dies at 91

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William J. Coughlin, who led small North Carolina newspaper to a Pulitzer, dies at 91

By Zach C. Cohen, Published: May 13

William J. Coughlin, who traversed four continents as a foreign correspondent before guiding a 10,000-circulation North Carolina newspaper to a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into cancer-causing chemicals in the municipal water supply, died May 8 at a hospice in Bolivia, N.C. He was 91. ... The cause was liver cancer, said his former wife Patricia Conlon.
....

The work that led to the Pulitzer began when Mr. Coughlin noticed the fine print on the back of his water bill that said tests had been performed on the local water supply and the results could be picked up at city hall.

He assigned the task to cub reporter Betty Gray, who only had been at the paper for less than two months after working 12 years at her father’s insurance office. At that point, she barely knew how to use her word processor, much less sift through reams of documents about chemicals that “didn’t really look that suspicious to me,” as she told the New York Times after the Pulitzer win.

With the help of reporter Mike Voss, she interviewed state environmental and health officials and took water samples that revealed carcinogens in the drinking water at many times the level beyond federal regulations. ... The reporters dug up evidence that at least three mayors, plus local, state and federal officials, had known about the problem and ignored it for the greater part of a decade.