Miller, Alan 1954-

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MILLER, Alan 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born March 5, 1954. Education: Wesleyan University, B.A., 1976; University of Hawaii, M.A., 1978.

ADDRESSES:

Office—c/o Los Angeles Times, 202 West First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.

CAREER:

Journalist. Times Union, Albany, NY, political reporter and state investigative reporter, 1978-81; Record, Hackensack, NJ, county political reporter and state political reporter, 1982-87; Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, staff writer, 1989-94, investigative reporter in Washington bureau, 1994—.

MEMBER:

Committee of Concerned Journalists.

AWARDS, HONORS:

George Polk Award, 1996; Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, 1996; Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, 1996; National Headliners Award, 1996; Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, 2003.

WRITINGS:

Numerous articles for the Los Angeles Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist Alan Miller, on the reporting staff of the Los Angeles Times, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting along with colleague Kevin Sack for their "The Vertical Vision," a series on the U.S. Marines Corps vertical-lift Harrier jet aircraft. Linked to the death of forty-five pilots and nicknamed the "Widow Maker," the Harrier aircraft ultimately became the subject of panel discussion in the U.S. House of Representatives, which agreed to hold hearings to discuss military aviation safety following Miller and Sack's investigations. Hoping to advance its aviation capabilities beyond those of the U.S. Navy and Air Force, the Marine Corps instead advanced the death toll of its recruits through the Harrier, along with the Osprey part of its developmental all-vertical fleet.

The journalists' four-part series began as a human-interest story about the surviving families in Marine Corps crashes. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Miller and Sack scoured the National Archives, press clippings, and other databases to discover the names of the pilots killed in Harrier-related accidents, and interviewed these men's families. They also gained maintenance and combat records on Harrier jets directly from Marine Corps officials. Together with photographs depicting the pilots how lost their lives, "The Vertical Vision" series profiled the accident record of the aircraft through the loss to the military of these dedicated pilots; as Sack told Joseph Eaton and Makeba Scott Hunter in an article posted on the Investigative Reporters and Editors Web site, "I think it was an accurate portrayal. We let the chips fall where they might."