The Pulitzer Prize has long been a dangerous influence in American journalism, and it’s only getting worse.
For too long, newspapers have been edited for prize juries not their publics, taking resources away from local reporting to write long, show-off pieces that don’t necessarily serve their communities and that skew the priorities of newsrooms. Of course, I’m not saying that all Pulitzer-winning journalism is bad; of course, not. But I am saying that pandering to the Pulitzers is a perversion of the intent of the prize and of newspaper reporting as well.
Last year, the Pulitzers allowed just a little bit of online content to qualify for a prize. This year, they open that up to include “a full array of online material-such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video.” But they still insist, stubbornly, to award only journalism from newspapers.
Eligibility for entering the competition will continue to be restricted to newspapers published daily, Sunday, or at least once a week during the calendar year. “This keeps faith with the historic mandate of the Pulitzer Prizes,” Gissler said.
I thought the Pulitzers existed to award journalism, not printing.
And the more newspapers continue to define themselves narrowly, as a club, the worse their fate will be in a world of expanding journalism. That’s what I mean when I say that the negative impact of the Pulitzers is only getting worse, even as they try to make it better.
Esteemed jurors: Open up the prize. Award great journalism wherever and however and by whomever it is committed.
Karen Brooks writes a wonderful column at News.com.au defending a novel that includes good and bad Muslim characters against an Australian attack of PC tyranny that killed the work and threatens artists’ freedom.
Rebuffing a work of fiction on the basis of a “Muslim issue” is offensive. It somehow implies that the representations within the book are more than imaginative, and that, yet again, a few characters stand in for all. Ironically, those who protest against the content are doing exactly what they foolishly believe they’re preventing: stereotyping and reducing a diverse people to cliches.
But the negative response to Dale’s book has even wider implications for all creative artists. . . .
Whereas journalism ideally works in binarisms, presenting “both sides of the story”, creative artists are not so obliged. We rely on them to plunge us into the lives and psyches of different characters: good, bad and, yes, Muslim too. Without artistic licence, we stifle the creative impulse, curb imaginative expression and invite Orwell’s thought police into our communities and, worse, our heads. . . .
Whether we agree or disagree with the content and characters our artists create is irrelevant: don’t let being afraid (disguised as PC sensitivity) generate censorship.
Mr. Dale, please put your book up online. Don’t let the censors, no matter what their stripe, stop you.
I spent some time on the phone this morning with Ed Roussel, head of online for the Telegraph, as he was quite properly crowing about the paper-site’s scoop last night on the hiring of BBC Chairman Michael Grade by struggling ITV. It’s big and surprising news in the U.K. and Telegraph editor-at-large Jeff Randall, a former BBC business editor, got the story way ahead of the competition — which, as Roussel enumerated, includes the BBC, which lost its boss; Murdoch’s Sky, which just invested in ITV; and the Guardian, the Telegraph’s fiercest competitor, which emphasizes its media coverage. The Telegraph has been taking its lumps from that fierce competitor for its shakeups and layoffs but I’m sympathetic on that score; revolution is not painless.
But I was curious about how the Telegraph’s integration of online and print in its much-vaunted Star Wars was going. Roussel said the Grade story was a model for how it should work on a new platform that can cut across all media and tools: The story went online at 9:50 p.m. and in no time, they put up audio and video and more content, forcing those competitors listed above to attribute the news to the Telegraph. Roussel said there is no more debate about putting stories online first. He said they are gaining advantage by hiring people like Randall, who have TV experience, and also by sending all staff through a week’s multimedia training. And he argued that the Telegraph newsroom — which puts him next to his print counterparts and tries to break down the barriers among departments and media — “made a huge difference, and I’m not bullshitting you” in getting last night’s scoop out. I asked what the endpoint is and how far along they are toward it. Roussel said it is when journalists respond like Randall, telling the story in all appropriate media: “Here’s your tool kid; how are you going to use it?” He thinks they are two-thirds of the way there.
Interestingly, Roussel argues that not only the newsroom is changing but so is the public. He says that people are more likely now to join in collaborative. They are getting soldiers to video their experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq (some of it too gruesome to show, Roussel says). And when they asked their readers to show the impact of warming on their gardens (there will always be an England), more than 600 sent in photos. Networked journalism, that is.
Roussel emphasizes that that they are not getting it all right and that they have contractual issues with print and online staff, workflow issues primarily involving production, and technical issues (what newspaper doesn’t?). But he says that the full story of the Telegraph’s successes is not being told.
Because I’m a media wonk, I’m fond of the coverage of the industry in British papers — it may be a bit much for some but I wish we had more such coverage here. And I also wish we had more competition here, for that would improve this coverage. By this afternoon, the Guardian responded late, by necessity, but compensated with volume; I count 27 links to coverage, including even a special-edition podcast. The Independent had up just a few links, but the BBC had more than a dozen. Sadly, the Press Gazette folded this week, so it was silent. Overdose? Not for media porn junkies. And that is the real moral to this story: competition is good for it is spawning innovation.
(Disclosures: I write and have consulted for the Telegraph’s fierce competitor and I was also introducing Roussel to Daylife).
Jeff Pulver just put up free video from his Video on the Net conference in Boston, which was an unusually good confab, at least the part I could attend (I’m going back to the next in California in March). Here’s my spiel, in which I tried to put the explosion of TV in a historic and cultural context and push the participants on what we need next.
