James Gattuso

And the Prize for Best Reporting in a 19th Century Medium Goes to…

The Washington Post was ecstatic.   Having won six Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, it featured the news on the front page of yesterday’s edition, accompanied by a photo of applauding Post staff.  And they certainly deserved credit – the half-dozen prizes were the second-most won by a newspaper since the annual awards began in 1917.

 But one thing was missing in the Post photo: a newspaper.  There’s a computer screen in the foreground, being watched by the applauding staffers. And a TV in the background.  But there wasn’t an actual newspaper to be seen.

The photo says a lot about the changing face of journalism, and the rise of electronic media.  The traditional newspaper is quickly losing ground to newer forms of communication, notably the Internet.   Only two weeks ago, the Newspaper Association of America reported that print advertising had plummeted in 2007 by almost 10 percent, the largest one-year drop ever.

But despite these changes, the Pulitzer remains largely a paper-and-ink affair, limited mostly to traditional newspapers.  To its credit, the Pulitzer committee did change the rules a few years ago, allowing online journalism to be considered.  Thus, a number of winning entries have had significant online components.  But – except for the two“breaking news” categories – the rules still require that stories appear in print as well as online. 

 

Thus, online only-efforts are excluded – whether it’s investigative journalism on CNET.com; a feature story at Salon.com, commentary at the Huffington Post or Townhall, or straight news coverage at MSNBC.com.   Even work for traditional newspaper’s online versions doesn’t qualify for most award categories, unless it is also in a version that can be folded.  It’s as if awards were given for articles printed on “hot lead” Linotype machines, and not for digitally typeset pieces.

 As online journalism continues to grow, the Pulitzer committee’s rule – like the FCC’s newspaper rule — is becoming increasingly hard to defend.  For now, however, the rule may be a welcome one for print newspapers, who have less competition for awards.  Even if they read about the winners on their desktop PC.

April 9, 2008 | Comments |

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    No one can dispute the quality of the work for Pulitzers, but the prize's stature is destined to be diminished if id doesn't expand its purview beyond ink-on-paper entries.
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    Egads, you guys switched to WordPress? What's the world coming to?!
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    I'm sure the rule you cite (requiring a story to have appeared in print) will change eventually. But even if it does, I suspect the prizes will still mostly go to print journalists. Despite the fact that the electronic media are rapidly growing (in influence and audience size), I find that the quality of print journalism is still much better, especially as compared to the shoddy standards of "TV news" (which I consider somewhat of an oxymoron). Newspaper writing and editing are getting worse, but they're still better than the vast majority of what's cranked out by those with no print background. Of course, I'm terribly biased, because I was one of those print dinosaurs until I realized which way the winds were blowing about 16 years ago. :-)
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    True enough, at least in the short run. If the rule didn't exist, I don't think think your average pajama-clad blogger would be walking away with armloads of Pulitzers. But there are some online outlets that already can stand up to anything on paper. I cited CNET and Salon.com, but there are more. Remember, also, that online writing isn't necessarily by those with no print background -- some of the best are in fact by print refugees like yourself.
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