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Disclaimer: I am not a writer and don't know anything about the Pulitzer, or even the criteria/categories, so my comment is genuinely curious here: I'm not try
by 711seveneleven 9y ago
Disclaimer: I am not a writer and don't know anything about the Pulitzer, or even the criteria/categories, so my comment is genuinely curious here:
I'm not trying to downplay the importance and impact of Fowler's work, however, it seems a bit weird to me to award a Pulitzer using any of its existing categories. (Whether or not a new category should be created for her or whether an existing category's criteria be changed to allow for her work is a separate matter entirely).
The reason being is that I feel (with my admittedly complete amateurish opinion here) is that journalism as a craft should deal with the nature of third-party and objective investigating and reporting. There is a huge objective nature to journalism. Oftentimes, the expose or journalistic work undertaken by the journalist is about a third-party occurrence or individual(s), not about the journalist themselves.
Journalism is a noble profession. Example: War journalists. Soldiers risk their lives for their country; journalists risk their lives for something even less than that: a story. The story is almost never about the hardships the journalist undertook to report on such a story, only how those hardships affected others. Not the journalist themselves. They are removed and external to the story. Out of the picture frame, so to speak. The journalist recognizes that they are simply an external observer, with the key difference between themselves and who they report on is that they have luckily been blessed with the platform, the podium, from which their voice can be heard. They have the means to speak to the masses, and they must speak, but not for themselves. For others. Those that are unheard. It's not "I was rained on for three days straight camping out in the mountainside" it's "THEY were rained on for three days camping out in the mountainside".
My point behind all this is that at the heart of it, while Fowler's work was certainly impactful and shed light on a lot of issues at Uber/tech, it was not really journalism. There was no research and no investigation done into the treatment of women at Uber, other than a brief mention of her chatting with other women at the company who experienced a similar situation with the same manager she had. Other than that, it was mostly what happened to her. Arguably, I would feel like this should disqualify her even for the Public Service Pulitzer (which is usually awarded to newspapers, not individuals anyways), as the philosophy of Fowler's blog did not seem be in line with what I would consider to be journalism: the service of lending a voice to the voiceless. She wasn't speaking for others so much as she was speaking for herself.
Does that matter? After all, can't you say that a lot of external good came out of her personal blog on her personal experiences? I think it matters. I think journalism should remain objective and external to the reporter. There's too much of a conflict of interest and incentive to embellish details otherwise, when speaking and reporting for yourself and your benefit.
Tangential to this point is the fact that this story "fell into her lap" by virtue of it happening to her. She didn't seek out this story, something that was hidden in view. She merely recounted her experience. I'd give more credence to her blog as journalism if she made a marked effort to make the story more than just about her, even though the harassment happened to her as well.
I'm not trying to discount her story for a Pulitzer by virtue of Fowler not being a journalist, I am arguing on a philosophical level, a recount of something that happened to you is not journalism.
- hlc 9y agowell put
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]