Disgraced media figure Janet Cooke

Not often do Pulitzer Prize winners have that prize immediately taken away, but such was the case in 1981 with Washington Post attractive African American rising star reporter Janet Cooke.

The story that landed her in trouble was about an 8-year-old African American boy, identified simply as Jimmy, who lived on the rough streets of the nation's capital and who had become a heroin addict. Readers shuttered with sympathy upon reading the story's description of this poor child with needle marks pocking his tiny arms.

Public outcry was such that Mayor Marion Barry launched an unsuccessful search for little Jimmy. As it turned out, this was because there was no Jimmy, just many other children who were in similar predicaments.

Finally, Cooke admitted that "Jimmy" was a sort of composite character who represented other ghetto children she had encountered. This revelation of less than literal truth embarrassed her paper and her managing editor, Bob Woodward, who had nominated her for the Pulitzer. She was forced to resign, and the Pulitzer was straightway returned to sender.

It also came to light that some of the credentials on Cooke's resume had been distortions of truth. She did not, in fact, speak four languages, had not completed a degree at Vassar, and had not studied at the Sorbonne as claimed.

Later, Cooke married a lawyer, and the couple lived for a time in Paris. They divorced, and she dropped out of the media radar for years. Then in 1966, she did an interview story that appeared in GQ magazine. It was written by her former Post colleague and one-time boyfriend Mike Sagar. The two received a $1.6 million payment for movie rights to the Cooke story.