Pulitzer winners announced -- did I miss the thread?

Could those of you criticizing the awards point to which specific stories you don't think were worthy of the resources expended to cover them?

Or is the critique of stories dressed up to win Pulitzers that don't actually win (which would have much more to say about the people at the newspapers than about the awards and their selection process)?

 

As much as I admired the Ledger's work, I cannot fathom (pun intended) why it would devote resources to a story that is far, far outside its coverage area and has little or no germane connection to its core northern New Jersey suburban readership.

 

Doesn't writing stories that readers find interesting serve them? The comments on the story about the Pulitzer and the story itself all seemed to enjoy it. Further, to the extent the Ledger is part of NJ.com, aren't any stories that appeal to the state worth it (especially something like this that had an online aspect)?

 

Also, to the extent you don't think the Ledger should spend resources on this, did you advocate for closing foreign bureaus at major metro newspapers (back when they still existed)? If not, how do you distinguish?

 

I think its all about context. The stories are great. No question. If all of these stories were written and produced with in the same manner as every other story the papers ran - fine. Papers are doing better than I thought. It just seems to me that some story comes up in a meeting that an editor decides will be the paper's "big story" of the year (emphasis singular) while they let the rest of the product slide.
Play is everything these days. Hard to think how Watergate would have won a Pulitzer for the Post these days - maybe they would just hold everything they learned over the months and blow it out in a big Sunday package. As I recall - many of the stories didn't even make it above the fold, if they were on A1 at all.

 

Dan, I'll bet a beer that Sendai earthquake and nuclear power plant disaster coverage wins a Pulitzer for some paper, probably the WSJ, which has totally kicked ass on this story, in 2012.

 

First, I'm not so sure the Post wouldn't still win a Pulitzer today. ProPublica won for an online publication not dedicated to producing daily news. The Times won for a series of stories on the Russian justice system-there was nothing too extravagant of how they were played in the paper. And did the LA Times's story on the Bell salaries get big play until after it came out? I don't think there's anything to suggest that a steady stream of quality reporting on a big story wouldn't win.

Maybe you'd have a case about the features or explanatory winners, but, of course, they're feature and explanatory pieces-they're designed to be played big by their very nature. Would you suggest eliminating those departments completely and just moving to straight news?

 

The way I see it - if your work is a finalist, you've won. The way the final awards are decided, by a board of 18, half of whom are based in either NY or Washington - makes me think there is a lot of back-scratching going on.
The Golden Globes gets flack for the way they're chosen - at least there are CPAs involved and the voting body is larger.
I've judged SPJ contests - the paper provided pizza and soda and gave us a stack of entries from a region on the other side of the country. We spent about three hours on the thing. We didn't know anyone involved or have any other relationships with the entrants. Yes it was subjective - but we didn't have any conflicts of interest.
Again - no beef with any of the winners, it is just the process itself that doesn't seem to be kosher.

 

What I'm saying is there is other subject matter in NJ that could potentially be changed by similar work than the wreck of a scallop boat.

 

That argument could be made validly about lots of stories. The other side of it is that it's never a bad thing when a newspaper decides to demonstrate to the government, businesses and to the readers that we remain a court of last resort for regular people who get fucked over somehow or whose deaths are written off because, well, they are just scallop fishermen (or whatever). Officials can ultimately shrug off the deaths, then a newspaper decides not to. If the powerful cannot accurately guess when we will decide to throw vast resources at something, perhaps they will think twice before deciding no one's gonna care, so fuck it.

 

Out here there was a classic example - The Oregonian has won Pulitzers for tracking a potato from the ground, through processing to a French fry bin at a McDonalds in China.
A year or so later - the city's weekly won for uncovering that a former Portland mayor and Oregon governor who was about to be named to another state post was having relations with a 14-year-old back in the 70s. Turns out everyone had heard the rumors for years, The Oregonian admitted they had heard them, and some officials had known for certain - but they let it slide for their own reasons.