1997 Pulitzer Prize, Editorial Writing: Bernard L. Stein, of The Riverdale Press, a Bronx, N.Y. weekly, for editorials on politics and other city issues.

Bernard L. Stein grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where his father founded The Riverdale Press in 1950. He took over as editor from his father in 1978, and in 1980, he and his brother became co-publishers of the fiesty weekly, circulation now 14,000.

In February 1989, the paper's office was firebombed and destroyed in retaliation for an editorial defending the right to buy and read Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses." Each year since, on the anniversary of the bombing, Stein, 56, has written an editorial about Rushdie as "our way of saying that bombs can't destroy ideas."

Its most controversial editorial last year, titled "The Crime of Hatred and the Sin of Silence," gave an account of a black Riverdale youth stopped at gunpoint on his way home in his own neighborhood by a white retired city police lieutenant.

"If the paper had a motto, it would be 'Let the People Decide,' " he said, referring to an old SDS slogan. "What links my father and me is our absolute conviction that ordinary people are capable of making important decisions: all they need is accurate information."