Cheever, Block, Warren Win Pulitzer Prizes

NEW YORK--The Point Reyes, Calif, Light, a weekly newspaper with one full-time reporter and a circulation of 2700, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for public service yesterday for its investigation of Synanon, the controversial West Coast drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.

The Philadelphia Inquirer won its fifth straight Pulitzer for the international reporting of Richard Ben Cramer from the Middle East.

John Cheever's collection of 51 short stories written since 1945 entitled "The Stories of John Cheever" won the prize for fiction.

Herbert L. Block of the Washington Post--better known as "Herblock"--won the prize for editorial cartooning for the third time in 37 years.

The drama prize went to Sam Shepard for his play "Buried Child," a study of a disintegrating family in rural Illinois.

Robert Penn Warren won his third Pulitzer, for poetry, for "Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978."