Janet’s World

In 1981 Janet Cooke, a staff writer at the Washington Post, won the Pulitzer Prize for a story about an eight-year-old heroin addict. The piece was invented, and her résumé was also falsified, so the award was withdrawn and her career collapsed. The affair unfolded under editor Ben Bradlee during the period of investigative reporting that followed Watergate.

This 20,000-word article is an expanded "author's edition" of a piece first published in GQ. It includes the only in-depth interview Cooke ever gave. Sager follows the fact-finding of the Post's internal ombudsman report, which is widely available online, but concentrates on Cooke's personality and upbringing to present the person behind the scandal. He also examines the difficulties she faced as a Black woman working as a professional in the early 1980s, a dimension that is often overlooked in accounts that treat her only as a fabricator.

The work first appeared in Sager's earlier story collection, Scary Monsters and Super Freaks. This standalone edition is issued by The Sager Group as part of its Women in Journalism series.