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D.C. police immediately called upon Cooke to identify the boy so that he could be helped. When the Post invoked First Amendment protection of confidential sources, Mayor Marion Barry assigned a task force of hundreds of police and social workers to locate Jimmy. From the start, narcotics agents doubted that any drug dealer would provide costly heroin to a talkative youngster who might tip off teachers and friends. After three weeks and thousands of man-hours, the search was called off. Says Barry: "I was very firm in my conviction that Miss Cooke's article was part myth, part reality."
At the Post, City Editor Milton Coleman was "very frankly surprised" that the police had not located Jimmy, and he wanted another story on young addicts. He teamed Cooke with Courtland Milloy, a streetwise reporter. Says Coleman: "Milloy came back with a lot of doubts. There was no real indication that she knew the area." Although increasingly alarmed, the editors were comforted by letters from readers who claimed they knew Jimmy or children like him.
Concerned that Jimmy might die while the Post was standing behind the First Amendment, Cooke's editors told her that she would at least have to point out Jimmy's house. When the appointed day came, Cooke told Coleman that she had already gone to the house alone and that the family had moved. Her editors felt misled, but nevertheless decided to nominate "Jimmy's World" for a Pulitzer. Says Coleman: "We had some doubts, but we weren't able to prove our suspicions. If we did not nominate the story, there would have been questions asked."
Entered in the local reporting category, Cooke's story lost out to the Longview (Wash.) Daily News, which was cited for its coverage of the Mount St. Helens eruption. But the Pulitzer Prize board was so impressed with Cooke's work that it gave her the award in another category, overturning the feature writing jury's choice of Teresa Carpenter of the Village Voice, who was belatedly given the honor after the fraud was discovered. Says Board Member Osborn Elliott, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism: "It was a very dramatic telling and a moving piece. I figured that the Post had verified it." It was the first known fakery in the 64-year history of the Pulitzer Prizes.
When to use confidential sources is one of the most ticklish decisions faced by any newspaper editor. Usually the decision is made on a case-by-case basis, factoring in the experience of the reporter, the nature of the source's information and the likely consequences of the story. Although only a handful of newspapers have written policies on the use of unnamed sources, many editors insist on being told who the source is. Says Miami Herald Editor John McMullan: "Editors ought to run the newspapers, and that means insisting on credible sources known to them. It's part of the checks and balances of the newspaper." Adds New York Times Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "If a reporter wouldn't give [his source] to me, I wouldn't print the story—and I'd probably suggest that the reporter find another editor and paper he trusts more."