Washington Post wins 6 Pulitzers

Nope. It's to show what a bunch of uncultured idiots we ugly Americans are.

Next up: Jay-Z plays the Augusta National parking lot!

 

I'm nominating this thread next year for containing the word, "douchenozzlery."

 

I enjoyed the story, but I'll admit to being an elitist snob.

 

So do i.
But that piece pushed even me into the red zone.
I will now go eat some red meat.

 

I didn't read it as elitist. Or...even if I did, I wasn't annoyed.

I've been to the symphony once in my life, 12 years ago, and couldn't care less about classical music. I didn't think the story was telling me I was a cultural inferior for not caring about classical music - it was telling me that there is art, beauty and genius, of all kinds, everywhere around me, and that I should make sure I don't get so entrenched in routine, so focussed on the daily grind, that my eyes are closed to it.

I'd guess that that's why the piece was so resonant with so many people - so many of us know we'd be the people with our eyes to the ground, bolting as quickly as possible to our budget meeting. But we don't want to be that person. And, even if story's methodology was dubious, it reminded us of that.

 

Dear FB, Frank, et. al: The further away I get from the newspaper business, the more easily I forget the, uh, sensitivity of many of its personnel.
To sort of repeat myself. The fact I had no idea who Mark Feeney was has no bearing on the quality of his work, for which I will more than gladly take Fenian's word. I don't read the Globe arts coverage and I don't read its obits. That's the whole point of papers, isn't it, to appeal to persons of different interests? I'm sure the Globe has many readers who value Feeney to the max and throw the sports section away without reading it. I'm not judging them, either.
My points are: 1. Individual awards are not a particularly valid test of a newspaper's merit. It's a team game, and as controversial as they are, I think the APSE section awards are better, if flawed, contests in that regard.
2. The Pulitzers are unfairly weighted towards the "prestige" papers. This I still believe. The Times won those 7 Pulitzers for 9/11. Their work was superb. Was it uniformly better than that of the Daily News, Post, suburban papers, Wall Street Journal on the same occasion? I doubt it very much.
3. Individual awards are seriously debatable because the merits of a newspaper story, column, cartoon, etc. are such subjective issues, as the discussion on this thread of the violin story makes clear.
4. The ultimate prize in journalism comes in an envelope with a cellophane window.

 

I liked the violin story. I thought it was a commentary on human life that people are so busy, so focused that they didn't notice a world-class musician playing in the Subway.
But I also think that if it had been an exceptional pop singer or a talented guitarist or something other than a classical musician, it would not have been a Pultizer winner.
I think the story has some appeal to the elitist. The look at the ignorant rubes who didn't know Josh Bell crowd.

I'd like to read the Romano story that Bird S. is gushing over. He being smarter than me and most of the rest of us non-Jeopardy winners.
As for the prize, I worked at a paper where we were given serious consideration on a couple of different occasions, but in the end, not a finalist.
I've always thought of the big awards, the playground of the big circ papers, with th exception being the USA Today. Unless you are a cartoonist, then a smaller paper can win and about half the time does.

 

If Jack White had been playing guitar, people would have noticed. If Christina Aguilera had been singing, people would have stopped.

I think the fact that it is an art that's relatively unknown and underappreciated in this culture propped the story up on a false premise - "People don't notice the beauty around them!" Not if they don't grasp that it's beautiful to begin with.

If you hung a Picasso at a southern Indiana diner, no one would blink. If John Mellencamp played at lunch, the place would break every existing fire code within two minutes.

In other words, Weingarten rigged the experiment.

 

I don't know.
You take Jack White with jeans a plain t-shirt, an accoustic guitar and no handlers and I wonder how many would notice.
Anyway, the BBC or maybe it was Q magazine had Dave Matthews play at London's version of the metro. Just him, a guitar and a hat for money.
Less than 10 people stopped, it was more a story on how some popular American acts don't migrate well.
I also suspect it was were Weingarten got the idea, but that's neither here nor there.
But I also agree that Weingarten rigged the game.

 

Weingarten says he didn't go in expecting a particular result, and in fact people in the newsroom were divided in their expectations:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601228.html

 

Six Pulitzers is all well and good, but how are their profit margins? What are they doing to reduce costs and drive up ad revenue? That's the real measure of a newspaper [/Rupert Murdock]

 

He may say that, but his responses to the letters that criticized his experiment tell a different story, at least that's how it seemed to me. Basically anybody who dared say that the timing and location of his experiment were flawed got a "So you want your daily commute to be routine and dull?" response.

And then there is this little piece from his intro about the piece:

I first got the idea for this story about two years ago, when I emerged from the McPherson Square Metro station on the way to work and saw a ragged-looking man playing keyboard. He was quite remarkably good, and no one seemed to be noticing him. He had maybe a buck or two in change in his open case.

I walked away kind of angry. I thought, "I bet Yo Yo Ma himself, if he were in disguise, couldn't get through to these deadheads." When I got to the office, I actually tried to reach Mr. Ma's agent.

Umm ... not going in with any expectations?

And a very nice cop-out answer to a good question from a reader questioning why he can't explain the outcome by the mere fact that people in the station at 7:45 a.m. might be trying to get to their jobs on time and thus couldn't linger:

Washington, D.C.: Many of your readers do not have understanding employeers who tolerate their workers being even a few minutes late. You have worked at The Washington Post, and you are pretty popular writer. I am curious what you think would happen to non-famous employees at The Washington Post if they were late to work because they were listening to a street musician.

Gene Weingarten: Honestly, nothing. It is not that sort of work environment. I feel pretty privileged to work there, and a little guilty about it.

Okay, we're out of time. We may have set some sort of record here for questions asked, and questions answered. I am grateful for your time and enthusiasm and the depth of your thinking here. And your tears. Especially your tears.

I'm not saying it wasn't a well-written piece, but if he was really running an experiment, the circumstances were severely flawed, and so are the conclusions drawn from it. He acknowledges that the circumstances weren't ideal, yet still draws a broad conclusion anyway.