Michael Vitez has been a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1985. He has covered a wide range of assignments, including political conventions, the World Series, elections in Haiti, the funeral of Princes Diana, and has written a twice-weekly column about ordinary people and the extraordinary things they do. He was a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University in 2000, teaching narrative writing, and was a Michigan Journalism Fellow in 1994-95. He has just completed a book, Rocky Stories, Tales of Love, Hope and Happiness from America's Most Famous Steps, (Paul Dry Books, 2006), a book, co-authored with Inquirer photographer Tom Gralish, about people from all over the nation and world who still come to the Philadelphia Museum of Art every day to run the steps like Rocky Balboa. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for a series of narratives he wrote about five individuals and the medical choices they faced, with their families, at the end of their lives.