Pulitzer thread

It's pretty simple: Pulitzer rewards social and civil change. 8.4 million recalls, congressional hearings and halts in manufacturing are examples of change.

 

Excellent journalism is often rewarded by the Pulitzers. This does not change one iota the fact the Prize structure is a complete farce (this is made more clear in the arts awards). I will believe these awards are made strictly on merit the year the Post and Times don't win any, which of course will never happen.

 

Just being devil's advocate here and trying to get you to further articulate your objection to the process: Is it really the upset of the century that the two newspapers that put the most resources into national coverage and hire the best reporters and pay them the most win the most Pulitzers? Similarly, St. Petersburg throws tons of resources into feature reporting and, thus, has cleaned up in that category over the years.

 

Yep.

Stick your fingers in your ears and go "lah, lah, LAH" when you can't get it up.

Typical of that cage-liner.

 

Interesting story in the Post today on the Bristol winner and the story that won him the award. How timely that after winning a Pulitzer at 28, he's close to leaving the biz.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/18/AR2010041803106.html

 

The chances of this guy, with a degree in international relations from the University of Chicago, staying in newspapers is exactly zero. I'm sure that he could get into Yale Law School tomorrow. I suspect that we'll be calling him Senator Gilbert or Secretary of State Gilbert or Justice Gilbert some day. The Pulitzer will be an interesting factoid on his Wikipedia page.

Also liked the note in that Post piece about how the story about the local Hooters girls getting into the national calendar had three times the page views as his investigative work.

Oh, the fiction winner was interesting, too. He couldn't get anyone to publish his novel for years.

 

Professionally speaking, just what is a Pulitzer worth at your shop? A couple weeks off? $10,000 raise?

 

Gah. Completely left that out of my post. Thanks for pointing this out.

I can't say I'm not surprised. If the guy wrote a story about the Jersey Shore kids, I'm sure that'd do wonderful online as well. Sad state of things, but no longer a surprise, unfortunately.

 

At a lot of shops, probably a pink slip since you're now an accomplished journalist who merits a $10,000 raise.