P&C reporter is Pulitzer finalist in feature-writing category

  • Posted: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 12:01 a.m.
    UPDATED: Friday, March 23, 2012 6:05 p.m.
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Tony Bartelme, an investigative reporter for The Post and Courier, has lived and played in Charleston for more than two decades. In his spare time, he runs, bikes and does anything else he can to get outdoors.
/Tony Bartelme, an investigative reporter for The Post and Courier, has lived and played in Charleston for more than two decades. In his spare time, he runs, bikes and does anything else he can to get outdoors.

Post and Courier investigative reporter Tony Bartelme was named Monday as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for "One Brain at a Time," a four-part series last year on the quest of a Medical University of South Carolina neurosurgeon to teach brain surgery in the African bush.

Bartelme's series focused on Dr. Dilan Ellegala's realization that much of the work by volunteer American and Western physicians to treat diseased and injured Africans had no lasting impact, except on those treated. The volunteer doctors would leave, and more poor Africans still needed care.

Ellegala set out to pass on his brain surgery skills to Africans, in the hope that he could teach them to help themselves, and make Western medical volunteerism obsolete.

The Pulitzer Prize judges said Bartelme wrote an "engaging account of a South Carolina neurosurgeon's quest to teach brain surgery in Tanzania, possibly providing a new model for health care in developing countries."

Bartelme is on leave from The Post and Courier participating in a 10-month Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. After being named a finalist, Bartelme wrote this reaction on his Facebook page: "What a thrill! And what great recognition for narrative writing in small- and medium-sized papers!

"The Post and Courier put together 'One Brain at a Time' during a period of intense financial pressure. The publisher, Bill Hawkins, could have said, 'What are you crazy? You want to go to Africa?' The paper gave me the time and expense account to do a story that allows readers to experience a compelling story about an important issue that affects billions of people -- the shortage of skilled doctors in low-income countries."

I'm deeply grateful for the Pulitzer judges' recognition of our work."

Bartelme was one of three finalists for the feature Pulitzer, which was awarded to Amy Ellis Nutt of The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J. She was honored for her deeply probing story of the mysterious sinking of a commercial fishing boat in the Atlantic Ocean in which six men drowned.

The other finalist was Michael M. Phillips of The Wall Street Journal, for his portfolio of deftly written stories that provide war-weary readers with fresh perspective on the conflict in Afghanistan.

Here's an example of Bartelme's writing in the series:

"Open the skull, and look at the brain. It's beige with a slight tint of pink and shaped vaguely like the head of a cauliflower. Now touch it. That's what Dr. Dilan Ellegala asks his medical students to do. Feels like thick porridge, the ones in Tanzania tell him. Feels rougher around the blood vessels, the students in South Carolina say. Ellegala knows that if he or one of his students cuts the wrong blood vessel, the brain will begin to die. They have just a few seconds to save it. If they fail, their patient may lose the memory of a child, or ability to taste or walk or breathe. No, Ellegala doesn't say anything about the stakes when his medical students touch those moist folds; he wants them to suspend their fears, expand the capacity of what they think they can do, feel the wonder and privilege of getting inside another human being's head."