The St. Petersburg Times, which has done some fine reporting on the AdSurfDaily case, today won two Pulitzer Prizes and was a finalist for a third.

Our warm congratulations to this leading-edge newspaper and to Lane DeGregory, who won the Pulitzer for Feature Writing; the Times’ PolitiFact team, which won the Pulitzer for National Reporting; and John Barry, a Pulitzer Finalist in the Feature Writing category.

These are extraordinary accomplishments. DeGregory won for her feature titled “Girl in the Window,” an incredible story about a child who had grown feral from a lack of nurturing.

The PolitiFact team website won its Pulitizer for its efforts to separate fact from fiction during the 2008 Presidential election in the United States.

Barry garnered his Finalist nod for “Winter’s tale,” the story of a dying baby dolphin.

The Times was the first newspaper to report in January that ASD President Andy Bowdoin had given up his fight for tens of millions of dollars seized by the U.S. Secret Service in a raid last summer. It also was the first newspaper to report that that federal prosecutors had filed a second forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD. The second complaint was filed in December.

Bowdoin now says that he is attempting to undo his January decision to submit to the forfeiture.

The Times also was the first newspaper to interview victims of an Alabama securities scheme that led to Bowdoin’s arrest in the 1990s.