The Odd Pulitzers
Big congratulations to all of the Pulitzer winners this year. As always, they seem worthy.
You can argue about whether this series or that cartoonist should have won instead but it's hard to look at the winners and not think them worthy of the distinction bestowed on them.
I would think TPM readers would particularly love, as they should, David Barstow's piece on the military message machine.
Taken as a whole, though, the prizes seem a little odd. First, it's kind of weird that more of the prizes didn't focus on the 2008 campaign and the financial crisis which were kind of, oh, big last year.
The Investigative, Explanatory, Public Service and Breaking News prizes--the heart of the order for the domestic coverage--all went to journalists who covered topics other than the financial crisis and the seminal election. Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post won in commentary for work that dealt with the election and the crisis but still, that's not the big main news prizes.
As best I can tell the closest the committee came to praising reporting of the financial crisis was making my old friend, Chuck Lane of the Washington Post, a finalist in editorial writing for his work on the financial crisis. Well deserved, I saw, and not just because I'm a Chuck fan. And Paul Krugman was a finalist in Commentary. But I'm a little surprised no Joe Nocera of the New York Times or Kate Kelly or Wall Street Journal which only picked up an award for Douglas Blackmon's book on Jim Crow. It feels a little like 1942 and the committee didn't really think World War II was that big a deal.
The indifference to the financial crisis was true of the National Magazine Award nominations earlier this year. Fortune, Forbes and Conde Nast Portfolio, where I'm a contributing editor, got no nominations. Business Week got a couple but the only one it got for print was an investigative piece about cholesterol drugs.
I suppose one could argue that the coverage of the financial crisis was so terrible that the prize committees did the right thing. But I think that's a tough case to make. Obviously, in the run up to the crisis, there could have been more and better coverage but there was plenty of good coverage even then and once the collapse began it'd be hard to argue that Andrew Ross Sorkin or others didn't have important things to say.
Another thought: A friend notes that the five awards for the New York Times, while well deserved, also has the feel of a conscious attempt to promote the gray lady when she's ailing. The Times needs it and it's the central newspaper in American life so should we be surprised, the friend notes, that the Times did so well? I kind of agree but they also had a very good year.
Finally, the Times coverage of the Spitzer sex scandal won for Breaking News. They did a great job. Special kudos to my pal, Nick Confessore who reports out of Albany and is another alumnus of The Washington Monthly. Still, for those who follow these things there is humor here. Another friend, a former Pulitzer winner, jokes that sex scandals are the new natural disasters. In the old days, a paper could get it's Break News Pulitzer with a fire or a shooting or a hurricane. Now, a tawdry romp is the stuff of Pulitzer dreams and every editor of a dying paper must be hoping for a good hooker scandal even more than usual.
Josh
Matt
Eric
Matt?
Would you be willing to speculate when blogs like TPM will be eligible for Pulitzers?
We are in the 21st century, right?
April 20, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's an excellent question. On the news side, Pulitzers have been reserved for newspapers for decades and unavailable to magazines. The fact that TPM has won MSM media awards suggests the wall is coming down.
April 20, 2009 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Per NPR's story tonight, online-only media was eligible for the first time this year, however none of them won.
I too was surprised that the campaign and the econopocalypse weren't better recognized, but I think that is because the Pulitzers aren't given merely for reporting the same story everyone else is. Two awards were given for the campaign though: Feature Photography to Damon Winter of the New York Times; and, Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post for Commentary focusing on America electing its first Black president. Certainly missing IMHO was an award for Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog for the best polling coverage and insights in any media format.
I think not giving an award related to the economy might be appropriate, in that the MSM failed so epicly in reporting it. Though I think it was covered in some non-print media fairly well, I followed the impending collapse primarily on Consumerist.com and on Public Radio's This American Life's money specials.
April 20, 2009 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
econopocalypse
Nice pseudoword!
The money segments on "This American Life" were outstanding. I couldn't really grasp the nature of the mortage industry crack-up until listening to those interviews.
That work definitely deserves awards.
April 21, 2009 8:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you about Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com. That and TMP's Election Central were my go-to places for election coverage last fall. And Nate's projections were right on the money.
April 21, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Aaaak! Did I really write "TMP"?? Or is there some sort of dyslexia bug on this site? Yeah, that must be it--the evil dyslexia bug.
April 21, 2009 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
encouraging sign last year when TPM won the Prestigious Polk Award for it's coverage of the US Attorney Scandal.
from my seat, progressive blogs own Explanatory Reporting - USAA's, Libby Trial, Econ Meltdown, Catastrophic Collapse Disorder, etcetera
and don't forget Nate Silver was the brightest light to emerge from 08
April 21, 2009 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pulitzer Prizes in journalism are meant to confer proper and fitting recognition upon a journalist for the superior quality of his or her work product, and not upon whatever trendy topic du jour he or she happens to be covering on a given assignment. Frankly, what I consider "kind of wierd" is your apparent failure as a professional to understand that rather simple yet elegant concept.
More to the point, and I speak only for myself here, the majority of "big issue" coverage offered by both you and your colleagues last year was decidedly mediocre, at best. Much as in recent years past, your collective efforts during a presidential election year maintained a laser-beam focus upon the personal quirks and flaws of the competing candidates and their spouses -- particularly those candidates who for whatever reason incurred your scorn or wrath -- rather than the important issues those candidates were ostensibly discussing.
Case in point above, in which you decidedly consider former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's dubious penchant for high-priced call girls a far more interesting subject for journalists than his exemplary work in combatting corporate greed and fraud on Wall Street during his term as state attorney general -- well, that pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it?
Aloha.
April 21, 2009 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
it's never too late to take a reading comprehension refresher class, my friend.
you must have read Matt's posting upside down in an inverted parallel universe to come to your conclusions.
or did you just riff from the top of your head without trying to understand what he wrote? just kind of knee jerk to the head kind of writing doesn't cut it here.
so, yes, aloha, the goodbye one.
April 21, 2009 1:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with your assessment, NewsNag... may I also say to Donald that weird is spelled w-e-i-r-d. Needless to say, you spelled it weirdly. In addition to echoing NewsNag, may I say that your criticism was snarky, and there usually is little, if any, room for snark when issuing criticisms, especially when critical commentary opens oneself to analysis and reply. You do want this comment section deteriorating into a hatefest, do you?
April 21, 2009 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Campaign Coverage did win for National Reporting, Feature Photography, and Commentary - and I note the 'National' prize was for an online entity -
maybe an "odd" year, but maybe just maybe the Committee saw what so many of us out here saw - TradMed journalism's tired reliance on their own clubby little echo chamber resulting in not much more than he said/she said and horserace! filler
Matt - have you seen this CJR piece ?
http://www.cjr.org/full_court_press/above_the_fold_beltway_journal.php
April 21, 2009 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
oh back to the Pulitzers! I think Matts comments on right on target! Newspapers are publications of daily record, and it is odd for those charged with recognizing excellence to skip over the big news of the day. That's a legitimate criticism. And mercy awards to faltering papers remind me of giving lifetime achievement oscars to broken down or dying actors who might have been passed over in their prime. Instead of five, let's give the NYT a MegaPulitzer to hang on the wall before she sputters out completely!
April 21, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
To be fair, most of the coverage of the financial crisis was between 6 and 15 years too late. Like policy, reportage is much less helpful once a crisis comes to a head. And the election coverage last year continued to be poisoned by the urge to make major party candidates seem palatable.
The eligibility of online media was announced no later than December 8th...
http://malechem.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-now-eligible-for-pulitzer.html
April 21, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Go back and look at the last election year Pulitzer prizes. They didn't hand them out to election coverage than either. In fact this year saw more awards handed out to election year coverage than the last two contests combined. Pulitzers are rarely handed out to large stories that are covered from different angles. IN the National Reporting category they seek out individuals who have shown exceptional and new ways to look at old stories or, in the case of this year, innovation. It is a sham to state that the Pulitzers aren't beating the drum of what Matt Cooper thinks should win. If Cooper spent 4 minutes searching the database at the Pulitzer website he can find that they often hand out awards to what they feel are deserving, not the establishment at large. I say kudos to them for recognizing original stories and no the standard fare.
April 21, 2009 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good points about what the Pulitzers left out. We get whipped up about presidential elections which is out of proportion to other news, IMO. And there was excellent reporting on the financial 'crisis' that was unfortunately ignored or diminished. There's a whole other area-in depth reporting of the impact on states and local jurisdictions and nonprofits, as well as us 'regular' folks for whom economic matters are getting much much worse since the impacts started awhile back.
April 21, 2009 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a journalist. I believe no one received a prize for reporting on the financial collapse or the election because the coverage simply wasn't that good. I don't believe the election coverage broke new ground or changed anything, and no paper distinguished itself with fabulous, consistent high-quality reporting. As for the financial crisis? We were caught totally flat-footed, out of our league and unable to explain, unable to aid the American public in any by, perhaps, effecting a better bailout plan last September.
April 21, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have to agree with the skeptics. I'm a recovering journalist, too, and have both won awards (statewide and national) and judged them. There is a conscious effort -- well-placed, IMHO -- not to reward the writer who lucked into the big story, e.g. the election and the financial meltdown. Rather, the awards generally should go to those who demonstrate unique initiative and enterprise, come at a story from a new angle, do some exceptional source work and convey the information in an outstanding way.
Ellaquince correctly points out that the profession generally dropped the ball on the financial crisis, but we shouldn't be surprised. News organizations generally under-resource their business and financial sections, and understanding numbers is always hard for wordsmiths to begin with.
And given the uniqueness of this year's election -- no incumbent president or vice president running, the Clinton candidacy, the Palin selection, and victory for a black man -- the ordinariness of the coverage was, I think, accurately reflected by the Pulitzers.
April 21, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Filed under "If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it" category Glenn Grunwald over at Salon has a great article today pointing out that the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting, one of the most prestigious, was awarded to David Barstow.
The networks completely ignored the story when it was breaking, and completely glossed over it again yesterday when reporting on the Pulitzer, didn't even think it deserved a mention even when several "lesser" Pulitzer were named.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/21/pulitzer/index.html
April 21, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Being from Las Vegas, I had to read it twice to believe my eyes that our own Las Vegas Sun had a Pulitzer-winning reporter. This from a very small, almost dying, liberal publication that just might -- hopefully -- receive a new life against the behemoth, right-wing, Review-Journal.
The Sun was one of the twice-daily delivered newspapers, the evening edition, that was almost rendered extinct when Brian Greenspan sold to the R-J a few years back. Thankfully, to his good insight, a clause in the purchase was to keep the Sun alive -- however that might be accomplished.
So now we get to see it still kicking, albeit only about 10 pages of publication versus the monstrous R-J. But it's still there.
Hallelujah.
April 21, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
it's kind of weird that more of the prizes didn't focus on the 2008 campaign
Maybe that's because so few of the campaign stories were worth reading, much less worth prizes.
Even by the low standards of breathless, horserace coverage set in previous election years, 2008 was the pits. Almost no issue coverage.
So I don't find it a bit "wierd", and it reassures me about the priorities of the Pulitzer committee.
Wait for the P-U-litzers and see if a few campaign stories don't make the finals...
April 21, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
It feels a little like 1942 and the committee didn't really think World War II was that big a deal.
Again: The judges aren't necessarily making a statement about the importance of the topic but the quality of the work.
The financial press didn't exactly cover itself in glory.
April 21, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink