12 ms·

2020 Pulitzer Prize Winners

269 points by hhs 7y ago

trimbo 7y ago
> Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times Worth their weight in gold on the 737 Max story. Congratulations!
ArjA 7y ago
The press gets a bad name a lot of the time, especially by those who are in positions of power and who are subject to the press, but the reality is that a lot of the press and many journalists do incredible work that shed light on various stories that might go unnoticed if it was not for journalism and the press. Obviously there are bad actors that degrade what the press does or stands and those actors usually are louder and get put in the spotlight but there are so many incredible journalists that really do uphold the intended role of the press; to inform, criticize, and stimulate debate. I’m glad that parts of the press, those who really do hold up journalistic integrity and care about their work/role, are recognized especially in the current state of the world where the press, even good actors, are often blamed or criticized for doing their job and are somehow framed as the “bad guy.”
- pm90 7y ago
  Seriously, so much this. You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Journalists play an extremely important role in keeping a check on power and as such are critical to the health of a democracy. The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far; without a good, unbiased press there is simply no way to have an honest conversation about the most important problems that a country faces and the different plans by which to address them (as is becoming very clear by the botched response to the Coronavirus pandemic).
  - umvi 7y ago
    > The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far It would make me a lot angrier if the most popular news outlets were indeed "good, unbiased press" and not spin doctors and propaganda distributors for [insert political machine].
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Both/and, not either/or. We should be angry at the president's violent rhetoric toward the press, and we should be angry at the press's bias and spin.
      - nopriorarrests 7y ago
        Well, I think that what basically happens now? Half of the nation angry at president rhetoric, and half of the country angry at press bias. Just different halves, but being angry at many things at once is hard, mentally. But you have your wish granted, more or less. Everyone is angry :)
    - orsenthil 7y ago
      The reliable media often back up the claims with resources, motivations and you have the history to verify. If a person makes a blanket statement like "press is biased" or "is a spin-doctor" for X, we need to ignore that move past it. We tend to identify reliable sources over time, and there are plenty of reputed, reliable journalists and newspapers in the world. Just like reliable politicians. Kudos to them.
      - cm2187 7y ago
        Most of the biased reporting doesn’t happen through false claims but through selective reporting. The information that fits the narrative is pushed, the information that doesn’t never gets published. It is possible to lie by remaining factually correct. Ask any lawyer or advertiser. And I see very few if not no major media outlet that doesn’t indulge into that selective reporting all over its pages. Ignore me and move past me!
    - 7y ago
  - cambalache 7y ago
    > You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Where do this come from? There is EXCELLENT journalism all over the world. Even in places with high censorship (which are the exception, not the rule) there a great and brave journalism.
    - davidw 7y ago
      Local papers are disappearing left and right, in the US. Most of what they do is not Big Stories, but things like covering the city council meetings in a way that TV stations don't. Their disappearane has a real financial effect https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-newspaper-close-city-bond-finances-suffer/561422/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-news...
    - VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
      There is no "journalism" in China. Or Russia.
      - cambalache 7y ago
        Indeed there is of every kind, from community people to big media, of course, the official organs are biased, but they don't encompass all journalists, the same way American journalism is not just CNN and Fox News. It is highly insulting and arrogant to assume there is no brave journalism there where people have lost their jobs or their lives by reporting inconvenient truths. You need more street.
      - YarickR2 7y ago
        How knowledgeable are you on this subject ? Do you read Russian ? Chinese ? Watching native TV channels, listening podcasts in Russian and / or Chinese ?
  - roenxi 7y ago
    If you change the article URL from 2020 to 2018 and search for "Trump" you can see the Pulitzer they handed out for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election". In 2020 that has toned down to a Pulitzer for "skewers the personalities and policies" or "illuminates the personal impact [of his anti-immigrant policies]". The quality of the hard-hitting journalism seems to be winding back, maybe Trump wore them down?
    - GavinMcG 7y ago
      Alternatively, you should expect hard-hitting journalism in the "Explanatory Reporting" and "National Reporting" categories, but should expect skewering in the category of "Editorial Cartooning".
  - arkh 7y ago
    > a good, unbiased press I'd argue most of what is sold as "the press" is not that. Click-bait, PR mouthpieces, unverified "news", inflammatory news and padding are the majority of what people see.
    - illiilliiililil 7y ago
      "Sources say..." Bye!
  - illiilliiililil 7y ago
    What outlets come to your mind as good, unbiased? I'm assuming already that you think that reality just has a liberal bias.
    - wmichelin 7y ago
      A biased question about bias, nice. Something something turtles all the way down.
    - augustt 7y ago
      I'll make assumptions about you too: you think reading things you don't like = bias.
  - beaner 7y ago
    > The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far Why? He hasn't said it should be restricted in any way, he's said it's been biased and doing a bad job. That's a completely fair criticism.
    - agandy 7y ago
      According to him it's only ever biased if it's critical of his actions or policies. That injects more noise into claims of bias and can lead people to take them less seriously than they realistically should. Bit of a boy who cried wolf situation.
      - beaner 7y ago
        That just means you disagree with his criticisms, it doesn't mean his criticisms pose any type of political threat to the free press.
        DAlperin 7y ago
        Public opposition to any institution by the President of the United States is a political threat. Or rather anyone person who holds so much influence publicly attacking something is a threat.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        beaner 7y ago
        I wholeheartedly disagree. The president doesn't lose his right to free speech because of his job or how much influence he has. There is a clear distinction between criticizing the practices of an institution versus criticizing its existence categorically. A lot of people are purposefully blurring the lines here and it's really dangerous. The same argument could be used to say that the press has undue influence, and should therefore be regulated in what it is able to say or how it is able to report. The press in America has the same freedom of speech as individuals do: near unlimited. They come together. If you start picking and choosing, free speech is no longer a right.
- foob4r 7y ago
  This x1000 is why I subscribe to a dozen publications (even though I don't read them all), and donate to non profit newsrooms whatever I can.
- billfruit 7y ago
  But there seems to be a lot of dark patterns used by the press, and in the recent years it has only seemed to increase: Click-baitism, Gellman-Amnesia, rudimentary fact checking fails, feelings-journalism, a general sense of self righteousness and superiority, act self-defesively, seeking power to act as gatekeepers of information (They seem to like to push a 'gatekeepers are good narrative'), and are often too trusting of government, police and armed forces. Even recently when I watch the Trump briefings, I see journalists speaking as if in anger because the President is belittling them: especially when he played his compilation video: they where quick to dub it as a campaign video, and networks cut it from the broadcast: but mostly in contained clips of TV news downplaying the Covid-19 situation. No whatever the motivations of Trump are, the media seem to act self-defesively, even with anger and resentment around him. Trump may hate the press, but the feeling appears to mutual now: but really the press shouldn't love or hate anyone. Also I see lot of journalists ask Trump a question and then constantly interrupt him while He is answering: this dose not look good on TV for the journalists credibility is my view.
  - czzr 7y ago
    Fascinating. The head of the worlds most powerful and extensive intelligence service, and largest and best funded medical agencies justifies his actions by saying some random journalists didn’t know any better either? And you blame the journalists for calling him out on that?
    - billfruit 7y ago
      Only it seems the press lack humility and an understanding of their own fallibility as a human institution, and seems very self-righteous. Trump may not deal with them fairly, but that doesn't mean the press has to do likewise. Press seems more bent on defending their honour, than being the conduits of information to the public.
- steve76 7y ago
  If I went through life never turning on the TV or reading a news article, my life would be a lot better. Fun. No endless debate. No taking other people's problems. Most people are raised to be nice. Listen, be kind, share, stay calm. Then they see someone yelling on TV or all dressed up telling everyone what to do, and want that. They go to people they like, and just copy their political opinions. So when people run their mouths about the great debate, a lot of people's lives are messed up and never the same because of it. When you really push for big issues, they're clueless puppets. Flunked out of math. Flunked of thought. So now they just bully people into spitting into the wind and dying. Mess up. A war starts. A riot burns a city to the ground. Millions die from a plague. Oh well. Mix up unrestrained ambitious flunkies with the sewer of the world: jihadis, marxists, fascists, monarchists, organized crime, and you have All the World's Hatred Fit to Print. To the hills and mountains flee.
_hardwaregeek 7y ago
Ben Taub has been putting out some fantastic work, especially for someone so young. His article on Iraq's post ISIS policies was incredibly sad but very informative.
- sbuccini 7y ago
  Incredibly prolific, especially given his how well-received his track record has been. Takes some serious guts to take a year off from Princeton to _self-fund a trip to Syria during the middle of a war_ to learn how to be a war correspondent.
elteto 7y ago
Glad to see smaller publications putting out good journalism and being recognized. High quality reporting is, still, one of the most effective ways to speak truth to power. Unfortunately the internet has decimated smaller journals and local papers, so local issues might never get reported on. I wish that trend would reverse, but I have no idea how one would do that.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  Pay for your news, get a subscription to a local paper, participate in your local political process if you can. We're all so focused on work and what's going on in Washington that we don't allow ourselves to reserve any time or energy to understand local politics, because they're "boring".
  - jeffbee 7y ago
    My local paper and in fact every paper in California mixes a smattering of worthwhile reporting into non-stop stupidity. Every morning the editors of the LA Times wake up and think of a new way to trash every one of my core beliefs, so it doesn't matter to me that the LA Times published one (1) worthwhile piece of art criticism in 2019. That's certainly not enough to make me overlook the fact that the LA Times has been running a large-scale real estate scam for over 100 years, considering that housing is the most important issue to me. I subscribe to CalMatters and Berkeleyside and Boom California. Anyone who considers themselves a good local journalist needs to write for those outlets if they want my dollar. I'm not here to enrich the shareholders of legacy newspapers. ETA: There actually is one good newspaper in California: the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Wouldn't want to miss mentioning America's last newspaper.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - save_ferris 7y ago
      Do you have any evidence to back your LA Times real estate scam claim? Seems hard to believe that an organization that large would be able to pull off a conspiracy like that for 100 years without someone coming forward about it.
gxqoz 7y ago
I felt that Greg Grandin's Myth of the Frontier was actually the second-best counter-narrative to the standard accounts of American relations with its neighbors published in 2019. The most interesting was How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/books/review-how-to-hide-empire-daniel-immerwahr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/books/review-how-to-hide-... One of the more interesting sections for the Hacker News crowd is how technological advancements in World War II like artificial rubber and international standards allowed the US to cede the huge amount of land it directly controlled after the war (which is not to say that US influence completely disappeared in these places).
abc_lisper 7y ago
Does anyone know why Barry Blitt's recognition is now under contention? https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new-yorker https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new...
- Someone1234 7y ago
  I'm not sure. Very surprised that Pat Bagley wasn't even nominated, his cartoons have been all over the place in the last year, particularly on social media. Which I find particularly interesting as he isn't from a major market like CA or NY (he's published in a Colorado newspaper I believe).
- orsenthil 7y ago
  The page simply says- " (Moved into contention by the Board.) " - But does not state any reason.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- e15ctr0n 7y ago
  Contention here means as a contender for the prize. See the second meaning here: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/contention https://www.dictionary.com/browse/contention Moved by the board means that the board nominated it; not submitted by the author / publisher.
  - abc_lisper 7y ago
    Got it.. thanks!
- favorited 7y ago
  My interpretation was that the board thought he should be considered, so they added him to the pool themselves even though he hadn't been nominated.
2bitencryption 7y ago
I honestly don't know much about what it takes to win a Pulitzer. But while scrolling down that page, I was crossing my fingers for APM's podcast In the Dark to win something. The second season following the Curtis Flowers case is fascinating, infuriating, beautiful, harrowing, and culminates in a US Supreme Court case... I don't know where that podcast sits on the spectrum of "pulp crime interest" to "genuine reporting" but IMO it's far, far on the side of "genuine reporting".
- tolstoshev 7y ago
  Same. It re-opened the case and got it all the way to the Supreme Court, so that's pretty huge.
- danso 7y ago
  If I'm reading the Wikipedia page correctly [0], APM's latest season finished in 2018, although it did publish updates in early 2019. IIRC to be eligible for this year's Pulitzer (specifically the one in audio reporting, which didn't exist in 2019), the season would have had to been published in 2019. That said, This American Life did win a Pulitzer in 2011, but it had ProPublica as a publishing partner, and I believe it was the first time a journalism Pulitzer went to a project that did not publish in print [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Dark_(podcast)#Season_2_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Dark_(podcast)#Season_2... [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about/announcements/pulitzer-for-propublicas-wall-street-coverage https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about/announcements/pulitze...
Arainach 7y ago
What does "Moved into contention by the Board" mean in the context of these awards?
- apendleton 7y ago
  I believe these are cases where the publication itself didn't nominate the piece or author for consideration as typically happens, but the board decided to consider it anyway.
Amorymeltzer 7y ago
Two specific points of note: - This is the first year the audio reporting category is being awarded; This American Life seems like a perfect inaugural winner. - Colson Whitehead (Fiction) also won in the same category in 2017.
node-bayarea 7y ago
Pulitzer prize goes to.... liberals writing issues that only extreme liberals care about! Surprise!
- whymauri 7y ago
  Clearly only liberals care about airplane defects killings hundreds of people. Did you even click on the link?
  - ConanRus 7y ago
    yeah, two cases: one on Being, which was covered by everybody and in every country, and Baltimore mayor corruption. everything else just usual liberal BS.
    - mynameishere 7y ago
      Even the music. They literally had to go and find left-wing music to give an award to. Beethoven could have been in the running and lost because he just never got down on his knees... It's their award show, I get that, but damn they look mindless to anyone who doesn't automatically agree with all their nonsense.
dsimms 7y ago
One day a chicken will finally win, which will be a pullet surprise... But seriously, congratulations to the winners!
seibelj 7y ago
The 1619 project is at its core flawed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project#Critical_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project#Critical_resp... The American Revolution was simply not about protecting slavery. You can't say the birth of America was a racist endeavor - it's factually incorrect. This is historical revisionism.
- wahern 7y ago
  It's noted on the Pulitzer page for the award (https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-york-times https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-yor...) that the NY Times issued a correction to the original essay: "A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them." See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the... ("Today we are making a clarification to a passage in an essay from The 1619 Project that has sparked a great deal of online debate.")
  - newacct583 7y ago
    Which sounds about right to me. This wasn't ever that controversial a suggestion, nor is it unique to this essay. But it was an easy target for people who wanted to oppose the project as a whole. So we get comments like the grandparent, who apparently views this one idea as the "core" of a project that literally covers four hundred years of history. It's tiresome. I mean, I read this stuff when it was published (it was really great, and absolutely Pulitzer-worthy), and I swear when the knives started flying I had to go back and find the passages in question because frankly I didn't even remember them. It's also really upsetting that still, in the year 2020, the idea that black folks experience endemic racism is a partisan idea that has to be opposed by half the population as a matter of faith.
    - seibelj 7y ago
      The idea being pushed is that America was founded centrally on racism, is still racist, and will forever be racist. I disagree entirely.
jzer0cool 7y ago
Is it possible to win Pulitzer Prize with just 1 submission - (e.g. amateur submission in 1 of the categories)? Or does one require a track record of some sort for the year?
- danso 7y ago
  Putting aside the likely bias towards established organizations (big and small), most winners in the journalism article categories submit a series of articles, because practically speaking, several small articles often lead up to the big investigation (e.g. Watergate) [0]; or, one big investigation leads to a series of followups, including coverage about the impact and consequences from the story, e.g. Snowden files [1]. That said, there are one-shot amateur Pulitzer winners, most notably in the photography categories. The Pulitzer winning photo of the Kent State massacre was taken by a photojournalism student [2]. And one of the most famous early Pulitzer photos was taken by a non-journalism amateur: 24-year-old Arnold Hardy in 1947 [3]. I think the contemporary category where you will find the most examples of single-article winners will be Feature Writing, but I'm not aware of any amateurs who have won it: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/211 https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/211 [0] https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post [1] https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-1 https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Filo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Filo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Hardy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Hardy
  - jzer0cool 7y ago
    I appreciate the time spent you have spent putting together a nice response -- thank you!
typon 7y ago
Each story was impactful, either at a local, national or global level. Congratulations to the winners. We need more courageous and thoughtful journalism.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jvandonsel 7y ago
And Fox News sweeps it again!
danso 7y ago
At least a couple of this year's winners have been previously discussed on HN: via Seattle Times: - How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19421612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19421612 - Boeing altered key switches in 737 MAX cockpit limiting ability to shut off MCAS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887177 And via ProPublica: - Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094762 - Navy’s flawed technology set the USS John McCain up for disaster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844963 Both were awarded the prize in National Reporting (it's not typical for 2 different projects to get the same award the same year): https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/209 https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/209
jpdus 7y ago
The subject of one winning story (Governor Bevin) apparently knew that his pardons were Pulitzer-worthy before: https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1257389461429784583?s=19 https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1257389461429784583?s=19
- thebokehwokeh2 7y ago
  I don't understand what Bevin means by this. Is he being sarcastic?
  - phlyingpenguin 7y ago
    He was hoping to sway the story away from what he already knew was being written. He made the phone call to Sonka unscheduled and had never called before. In fact, it was a surprise because most of Sonka's work was not complimentary. Having the governor who was against news media (Trumpian) give a friendly call was very strange.
gen220 7y ago
I haven’t read most of the pieces awarded here, and I’m sure they’re all excellent. That being said, I want to call your attention to the winner for "Feature Writing", and recommend you to read it. Taub’s produced a heartbreaking, empathetic, and incredible piece, that tilted my perspective on the US government's handling of 9/11, and how the government and big (dis-)organizations work in general. Given his source material, it would have been easy (and justified) to construct the narrative into a tirade against the CIA. Instead, Taub takes a rather empathetic and detached frame of reference, and the result is a monument to the human toll of ruthlessly-executed ignorance. None of the people (victims or perpetrators) seem to fully understand their absurd roles: their actions driven by jumpy supervisors and acquaintances, who in turn are driven by a mix of fear, ideology and separation from "ground". And once the veil of ignorance is lifted, there are reputations and legacies to protect, bureaucratic boxes that "cannot" be unchecked. There's no undoing what's set in motion, because "undo" implies reflection and the admission of wrongdoing, which is something that we really struggle with as a society. It's a tragedy you see play out everywhere, and this is a particularly poignant and tragic case, beautifully presented. If it isn't a case study already, it ought to be one. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-darkest-secret https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-da...)
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  Thanks for your comment. I read the piece, and it was worth the time. After so many words about their shared story, seeing that photo of Wood and Salahi together was quite arresting.
- acqq 7y ago
  The story about a Guantanamo interrogator converting to Islam is hardly something I, as an atheist, would find motivating in any way. It is not the only story of such kind of conversion, but sadly, none of such proves anything positive about that (or any other) religion, or people involved. I say sadly since those who believe otherwise are directly primed by the beliefs common only in very religious societies, like the U.S., and not in the rest of the world.
op03 7y ago
That Epstein cartoon is brilliant given that no one still seems to know what happened - https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new-yorker https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new...
ConanRus 7y ago
What a remarkable list of SJW activity. Well done, liberals.
- generationP 7y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call covering Catherine Pugh's corruption SJW activity. There seems to be a gradient among the Pulitzers running between the more concrete and local categories (investigative, news) and the more philosophical and big-picturey ones (commentary, criticism). The latter are a hopeless left-wing circlejerk (1619 project lol); the former are solid and, from what I'm seeing, generally well-deserved.
0xy 7y ago
Should anyone be proud of a Pulitzer considering they gave one out to the New York Times for covering up genocide in the USSR? [1] It would seem to me that the Pulitzer Prize is ethically bankrupt considering who you share this 'prestige' with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
- jumelles 7y ago
  This happened ninety years ago.
blhack 7y ago
How could you design a fitness function for news to ensure that it was accurate? Papers like The Financial Times have an obvious one: people are using these to inform themselves about business and investment. If FT was giving inaccurate data, it would have an obvious cost to the people who read it. But for papers like the NYT, what is the incentive to accurately report the news? It seems like by inaccurately reporting things, they'll make more money. This is a problem. How would you fix it?
- chrisaycock 7y ago
  I get the impression that your question is merely to raise FUD about The New York Times rather than to legitimately ask about quality control. I've downvoted you (as have others), but I'll go ahead and answer you in good faith all the same. The way a publication can ensure its quality is to charge for it. That is, rather than relying mostly on advertising (which is per article), rely on subscriptions. The kind of audience that pays for news will appreciate higher-quality journalism. That audience also must stick around for the long haul. That's why the best-regarded outlets tend to be newswires (AP, Reuters), business news (WSJ, Bloomberg), donation driven (NPR, PBS), and long-form stories (NYT, WP). Indeed, a quick check of NYT's latest 10K shows that they got over $1B from subscriptions (and growing) with an additional $500M from advertising (and shrinking). https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/71691/000007169120000003/a201910-kq4project.htm#sB18F8EC551135FA3AE59A7C5B6E414F6 https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/71691/000007...
  - blhack 7y ago
    Ahh, no? I just used the New York Times and an example because it is by far the most popular newspaper in the country. It’s relevant to this post because they obviously won a bunch of awards, as the usually do. News and quality of news has been a major part of my life since my first ever semi successful project, which was a news aggregator I started over a decade ago. One of the mechanisms we tried then (before reddit existed as far as I know) was a sortof economy where each poster got a certain amount of tokens to “spend” on submissions and comments, and you could earn more tokens when people “paid” you for your quality contributions. Obviously it didn’t work. Since then I’ve tried computational linguistics approaches to this problem, which solves a problem, but not the fitness checking one I’m talking about here. And finally: my wife is a former political journalist, so obviously news and quality of news is a major topic in my life which I talk about, read about, and write about pretty regularly.
illiilliiililil 7y ago
The 1619 Project was such an awful bit of journalism. Totally not surprised it won a Pulitzer.
- phantarch 7y ago
  The entire project did not win, just one story from it by one person: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-york-times https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-yor...
- mulmen 7y ago
  I don't understand the usage of awful here. Are you using it to suggest the journalism is good and deserving of recognition (confusing) or that the Pulitzer is an award for bad journalism?
  - djannzjkzxn 7y ago
    I believe that illiilliiililil is expressing a somewhat complex set of opinions: 1) They genuinely don’t like the 1619 project. 2) They understand that the Pulitzer is supposed to be an award for good journalism. 3) They believe that journalism about some subjects is more likely to win a Pulitzer without being the best by illiilliiililil‘s standards. You could compare it to the concept of an “Oscar bait” movie: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait I’m not sure I agree with this criticism - I think exploring tough subjects can lead to great work that is especially deserving of praise.
    - thedudeabides5 7y ago
      On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-th...
- 7y ago
jpxw 7y ago
The ligatures, for example in “metaﬁctional”, are broken on this site for me (they appear in the wrong font)
panabee 7y ago
fascinating fact: the pulitzer prize, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, is named after a newspaper publisher infamous for yellow journalism. by the end of his career, however, joseph pulitzer had reformed himself and started producing outstanding journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer
- forgingahead 7y ago
  Sort of like: "The Enron Prize for good corporate accounting" "The Benedict Arnold medial of Patriotism" "The Lucrezia Borgia Best Cocktail award" etc
  - wp381640 7y ago
    or in 80 years time the prestigious Murdoch Award for excellence in journalism
dntbnmpls 7y ago
The Pulitzer Prize was created by the founder of yellow journalism ( AKA 1800s fake news ) - Joseph Pulitzer. Is this a prize that journalists or journalism should be supporting? It would be a like a physics award created by a flat earther. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize But I guess congratulations are in order.

269 points by hhs 7y ago

> Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times Worth their weight in gold on the 737 Max story. Congratulations!

ArjA 7y ago

The press gets a bad name a lot of the time, especially by those who are in positions of power and who are subject to the press, but the reality is that a lot of the press and many journalists do incredible work that shed light on various stories that might go unnoticed if it was not for journalism and the press. Obviously there are bad actors that degrade what the press does or stands and those actors usually are louder and get put in the spotlight but there are so many incredible journalists that really do uphold the intended role of the press; to inform, criticize, and stimulate debate. I’m glad that parts of the press, those who really do hold up journalistic integrity and care about their work/role, are recognized especially in the current state of the world where the press, even good actors, are often blamed or criticized for doing their job and are somehow framed as the “bad guy.”

pm90 7y ago
Seriously, so much this. You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Journalists play an extremely important role in keeping a check on power and as such are critical to the health of a democracy. The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far; without a good, unbiased press there is simply no way to have an honest conversation about the most important problems that a country faces and the different plans by which to address them (as is becoming very clear by the botched response to the Coronavirus pandemic).
- umvi 7y ago
  > The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far It would make me a lot angrier if the most popular news outlets were indeed "good, unbiased press" and not spin doctors and propaganda distributors for [insert political machine].
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Both/and, not either/or. We should be angry at the president's violent rhetoric toward the press, and we should be angry at the press's bias and spin.
    - nopriorarrests 7y ago
      Well, I think that what basically happens now? Half of the nation angry at president rhetoric, and half of the country angry at press bias. Just different halves, but being angry at many things at once is hard, mentally. But you have your wish granted, more or less. Everyone is angry :)
  - orsenthil 7y ago
    The reliable media often back up the claims with resources, motivations and you have the history to verify. If a person makes a blanket statement like "press is biased" or "is a spin-doctor" for X, we need to ignore that move past it. We tend to identify reliable sources over time, and there are plenty of reputed, reliable journalists and newspapers in the world. Just like reliable politicians. Kudos to them.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      Most of the biased reporting doesn’t happen through false claims but through selective reporting. The information that fits the narrative is pushed, the information that doesn’t never gets published. It is possible to lie by remaining factually correct. Ask any lawyer or advertiser. And I see very few if not no major media outlet that doesn’t indulge into that selective reporting all over its pages. Ignore me and move past me!
  - 7y ago
- cambalache 7y ago
  > You only realize how valuable good journalism is when you don’t have it, as is unfortunately very common in most parts of the world. Where do this come from? There is EXCELLENT journalism all over the world. Even in places with high censorship (which are the exception, not the rule) there a great and brave journalism.
  - davidw 7y ago
    Local papers are disappearing left and right, in the US. Most of what they do is not Big Stories, but things like covering the city council meetings in a way that TV stations don't. Their disappearane has a real financial effect https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-newspaper-close-city-bond-finances-suffer/561422/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-news...
  - VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
    There is no "journalism" in China. Or Russia.
    - cambalache 7y ago
      Indeed there is of every kind, from community people to big media, of course, the official organs are biased, but they don't encompass all journalists, the same way American journalism is not just CNN and Fox News. It is highly insulting and arrogant to assume there is no brave journalism there where people have lost their jobs or their lives by reporting inconvenient truths. You need more street.
    - YarickR2 7y ago
      How knowledgeable are you on this subject ? Do you read Russian ? Chinese ? Watching native TV channels, listening podcasts in Russian and / or Chinese ?
- roenxi 7y ago
  If you change the article URL from 2020 to 2018 and search for "Trump" you can see the Pulitzer they handed out for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election". In 2020 that has toned down to a Pulitzer for "skewers the personalities and policies" or "illuminates the personal impact [of his anti-immigrant policies]". The quality of the hard-hitting journalism seems to be winding back, maybe Trump wore them down?
  - GavinMcG 7y ago
    Alternatively, you should expect hard-hitting journalism in the "Explanatory Reporting" and "National Reporting" categories, but should expect skewering in the category of "Editorial Cartooning".
- arkh 7y ago
  > a good, unbiased press I'd argue most of what is sold as "the press" is not that. Click-bait, PR mouthpieces, unverified "news", inflammatory news and padding are the majority of what people see.
  - illiilliiililil 7y ago
    "Sources say..." Bye!
- illiilliiililil 7y ago
  What outlets come to your mind as good, unbiased? I'm assuming already that you think that reality just has a liberal bias.
  - wmichelin 7y ago
    A biased question about bias, nice. Something something turtles all the way down.
  - augustt 7y ago
    I'll make assumptions about you too: you think reading things you don't like = bias.
- beaner 7y ago
  > The current US presidents violent rhetoric against the press should make people a lot angrier than it has so far Why? He hasn't said it should be restricted in any way, he's said it's been biased and doing a bad job. That's a completely fair criticism.
  - agandy 7y ago
    According to him it's only ever biased if it's critical of his actions or policies. That injects more noise into claims of bias and can lead people to take them less seriously than they realistically should. Bit of a boy who cried wolf situation.
    - beaner 7y ago
      That just means you disagree with his criticisms, it doesn't mean his criticisms pose any type of political threat to the free press.
      - DAlperin 7y ago
        Public opposition to any institution by the President of the United States is a political threat. Or rather anyone person who holds so much influence publicly attacking something is a threat.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        beaner 7y ago
        I wholeheartedly disagree. The president doesn't lose his right to free speech because of his job or how much influence he has. There is a clear distinction between criticizing the practices of an institution versus criticizing its existence categorically. A lot of people are purposefully blurring the lines here and it's really dangerous. The same argument could be used to say that the press has undue influence, and should therefore be regulated in what it is able to say or how it is able to report. The press in America has the same freedom of speech as individuals do: near unlimited. They come together. If you start picking and choosing, free speech is no longer a right.
foob4r 7y ago
This x1000 is why I subscribe to a dozen publications (even though I don't read them all), and donate to non profit newsrooms whatever I can.
billfruit 7y ago
But there seems to be a lot of dark patterns used by the press, and in the recent years it has only seemed to increase: Click-baitism, Gellman-Amnesia, rudimentary fact checking fails, feelings-journalism, a general sense of self righteousness and superiority, act self-defesively, seeking power to act as gatekeepers of information (They seem to like to push a 'gatekeepers are good narrative'), and are often too trusting of government, police and armed forces. Even recently when I watch the Trump briefings, I see journalists speaking as if in anger because the President is belittling them: especially when he played his compilation video: they where quick to dub it as a campaign video, and networks cut it from the broadcast: but mostly in contained clips of TV news downplaying the Covid-19 situation. No whatever the motivations of Trump are, the media seem to act self-defesively, even with anger and resentment around him. Trump may hate the press, but the feeling appears to mutual now: but really the press shouldn't love or hate anyone. Also I see lot of journalists ask Trump a question and then constantly interrupt him while He is answering: this dose not look good on TV for the journalists credibility is my view.
- czzr 7y ago
  Fascinating. The head of the worlds most powerful and extensive intelligence service, and largest and best funded medical agencies justifies his actions by saying some random journalists didn’t know any better either? And you blame the journalists for calling him out on that?
  - billfruit 7y ago
    Only it seems the press lack humility and an understanding of their own fallibility as a human institution, and seems very self-righteous. Trump may not deal with them fairly, but that doesn't mean the press has to do likewise. Press seems more bent on defending their honour, than being the conduits of information to the public.
steve76 7y ago
If I went through life never turning on the TV or reading a news article, my life would be a lot better. Fun. No endless debate. No taking other people's problems. Most people are raised to be nice. Listen, be kind, share, stay calm. Then they see someone yelling on TV or all dressed up telling everyone what to do, and want that. They go to people they like, and just copy their political opinions. So when people run their mouths about the great debate, a lot of people's lives are messed up and never the same because of it. When you really push for big issues, they're clueless puppets. Flunked out of math. Flunked of thought. So now they just bully people into spitting into the wind and dying. Mess up. A war starts. A riot burns a city to the ground. Millions die from a plague. Oh well. Mix up unrestrained ambitious flunkies with the sewer of the world: jihadis, marxists, fascists, monarchists, organized crime, and you have All the World's Hatred Fit to Print. To the hills and mountains flee.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago

Ben Taub has been putting out some fantastic work, especially for someone so young. His article on Iraq's post ISIS policies was incredibly sad but very informative.

sbuccini 7y ago
Incredibly prolific, especially given his how well-received his track record has been. Takes some serious guts to take a year off from Princeton to _self-fund a trip to Syria during the middle of a war_ to learn how to be a war correspondent.

elteto 7y ago

Glad to see smaller publications putting out good journalism and being recognized. High quality reporting is, still, one of the most effective ways to speak truth to power. Unfortunately the internet has decimated smaller journals and local papers, so local issues might never get reported on. I wish that trend would reverse, but I have no idea how one would do that.

save_ferris 7y ago
Pay for your news, get a subscription to a local paper, participate in your local political process if you can. We're all so focused on work and what's going on in Washington that we don't allow ourselves to reserve any time or energy to understand local politics, because they're "boring".
- jeffbee 7y ago
  My local paper and in fact every paper in California mixes a smattering of worthwhile reporting into non-stop stupidity. Every morning the editors of the LA Times wake up and think of a new way to trash every one of my core beliefs, so it doesn't matter to me that the LA Times published one (1) worthwhile piece of art criticism in 2019. That's certainly not enough to make me overlook the fact that the LA Times has been running a large-scale real estate scam for over 100 years, considering that housing is the most important issue to me. I subscribe to CalMatters and Berkeleyside and Boom California. Anyone who considers themselves a good local journalist needs to write for those outlets if they want my dollar. I'm not here to enrich the shareholders of legacy newspapers. ETA: There actually is one good newspaper in California: the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Wouldn't want to miss mentioning America's last newspaper.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence to back your LA Times real estate scam claim? Seems hard to believe that an organization that large would be able to pull off a conspiracy like that for 100 years without someone coming forward about it.

gxqoz 7y ago

I felt that Greg Grandin's Myth of the Frontier was actually the second-best counter-narrative to the standard accounts of American relations with its neighbors published in 2019. The most interesting was How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/books/review-how-to-hide-empire-daniel-immerwahr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/books/review-how-to-hide-... One of the more interesting sections for the Hacker News crowd is how technological advancements in World War II like artificial rubber and international standards allowed the US to cede the huge amount of land it directly controlled after the war (which is not to say that US influence completely disappeared in these places).

abc_lisper 7y ago

Does anyone know why Barry Blitt's recognition is now under contention? https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new-yorker https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new...

Someone1234 7y ago
I'm not sure. Very surprised that Pat Bagley wasn't even nominated, his cartoons have been all over the place in the last year, particularly on social media. Which I find particularly interesting as he isn't from a major market like CA or NY (he's published in a Colorado newspaper I believe).
orsenthil 7y ago
The page simply says- " (Moved into contention by the Board.) " - But does not state any reason.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
e15ctr0n 7y ago
Contention here means as a contender for the prize. See the second meaning here: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/contention https://www.dictionary.com/browse/contention Moved by the board means that the board nominated it; not submitted by the author / publisher.
- abc_lisper 7y ago
  Got it.. thanks!
favorited 7y ago
My interpretation was that the board thought he should be considered, so they added him to the pool themselves even though he hadn't been nominated.

2bitencryption 7y ago

I honestly don't know much about what it takes to win a Pulitzer. But while scrolling down that page, I was crossing my fingers for APM's podcast In the Dark to win something. The second season following the Curtis Flowers case is fascinating, infuriating, beautiful, harrowing, and culminates in a US Supreme Court case... I don't know where that podcast sits on the spectrum of "pulp crime interest" to "genuine reporting" but IMO it's far, far on the side of "genuine reporting".

tolstoshev 7y ago
Same. It re-opened the case and got it all the way to the Supreme Court, so that's pretty huge.
danso 7y ago
If I'm reading the Wikipedia page correctly [0], APM's latest season finished in 2018, although it did publish updates in early 2019. IIRC to be eligible for this year's Pulitzer (specifically the one in audio reporting, which didn't exist in 2019), the season would have had to been published in 2019. That said, This American Life did win a Pulitzer in 2011, but it had ProPublica as a publishing partner, and I believe it was the first time a journalism Pulitzer went to a project that did not publish in print [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Dark_(podcast)#Season_2_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Dark_(podcast)#Season_2... [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about/announcements/pulitzer-for-propublicas-wall-street-coverage https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about/announcements/pulitze...

Arainach 7y ago

What does "Moved into contention by the Board" mean in the context of these awards?

apendleton 7y ago
I believe these are cases where the publication itself didn't nominate the piece or author for consideration as typically happens, but the board decided to consider it anyway.

Amorymeltzer 7y ago

Two specific points of note: - This is the first year the audio reporting category is being awarded; This American Life seems like a perfect inaugural winner. - Colson Whitehead (Fiction) also won in the same category in 2017.

node-bayarea 7y ago

Pulitzer prize goes to.... liberals writing issues that only extreme liberals care about! Surprise!

whymauri 7y ago
Clearly only liberals care about airplane defects killings hundreds of people. Did you even click on the link?
- ConanRus 7y ago
  yeah, two cases: one on Being, which was covered by everybody and in every country, and Baltimore mayor corruption. everything else just usual liberal BS.
  - mynameishere 7y ago
    Even the music. They literally had to go and find left-wing music to give an award to. Beethoven could have been in the running and lost because he just never got down on his knees... It's their award show, I get that, but damn they look mindless to anyone who doesn't automatically agree with all their nonsense.

dsimms 7y ago

One day a chicken will finally win, which will be a pullet surprise... But seriously, congratulations to the winners!

seibelj 7y ago

The 1619 project is at its core flawed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project#Critical_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project#Critical_resp... The American Revolution was simply not about protecting slavery. You can't say the birth of America was a racist endeavor - it's factually incorrect. This is historical revisionism.

wahern 7y ago
It's noted on the Pulitzer page for the award (https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-york-times https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-yor...) that the NY Times issued a correction to the original essay: "A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them." See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the... ("Today we are making a clarification to a passage in an essay from The 1619 Project that has sparked a great deal of online debate.")
- newacct583 7y ago
  Which sounds about right to me. This wasn't ever that controversial a suggestion, nor is it unique to this essay. But it was an easy target for people who wanted to oppose the project as a whole. So we get comments like the grandparent, who apparently views this one idea as the "core" of a project that literally covers four hundred years of history. It's tiresome. I mean, I read this stuff when it was published (it was really great, and absolutely Pulitzer-worthy), and I swear when the knives started flying I had to go back and find the passages in question because frankly I didn't even remember them. It's also really upsetting that still, in the year 2020, the idea that black folks experience endemic racism is a partisan idea that has to be opposed by half the population as a matter of faith.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    The idea being pushed is that America was founded centrally on racism, is still racist, and will forever be racist. I disagree entirely.

jzer0cool 7y ago

Is it possible to win Pulitzer Prize with just 1 submission - (e.g. amateur submission in 1 of the categories)? Or does one require a track record of some sort for the year?

danso 7y ago
Putting aside the likely bias towards established organizations (big and small), most winners in the journalism article categories submit a series of articles, because practically speaking, several small articles often lead up to the big investigation (e.g. Watergate) [0]; or, one big investigation leads to a series of followups, including coverage about the impact and consequences from the story, e.g. Snowden files [1]. That said, there are one-shot amateur Pulitzer winners, most notably in the photography categories. The Pulitzer winning photo of the Kent State massacre was taken by a photojournalism student [2]. And one of the most famous early Pulitzer photos was taken by a non-journalism amateur: 24-year-old Arnold Hardy in 1947 [3]. I think the contemporary category where you will find the most examples of single-article winners will be Feature Writing, but I'm not aware of any amateurs who have won it: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/211 https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/211 [0] https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post [1] https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-1 https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Filo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Filo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Hardy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Hardy
- jzer0cool 7y ago
  I appreciate the time spent you have spent putting together a nice response -- thank you!

typon 7y ago

Each story was impactful, either at a local, national or global level. Congratulations to the winners. We need more courageous and thoughtful journalism.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jvandonsel 7y ago

And Fox News sweeps it again!

danso 7y ago

At least a couple of this year's winners have been previously discussed on HN: via Seattle Times: - How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19421612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19421612 - Boeing altered key switches in 737 MAX cockpit limiting ability to shut off MCAS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887177 And via ProPublica: - Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094762 - Navy’s flawed technology set the USS John McCain up for disaster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844963 Both were awarded the prize in National Reporting (it's not typical for 2 different projects to get the same award the same year): https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/209 https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/209

jpdus 7y ago

The subject of one winning story (Governor Bevin) apparently knew that his pardons were Pulitzer-worthy before: https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1257389461429784583?s=19 https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1257389461429784583?s=19

thebokehwokeh2 7y ago
I don't understand what Bevin means by this. Is he being sarcastic?
- phlyingpenguin 7y ago
  He was hoping to sway the story away from what he already knew was being written. He made the phone call to Sonka unscheduled and had never called before. In fact, it was a surprise because most of Sonka's work was not complimentary. Having the governor who was against news media (Trumpian) give a friendly call was very strange.

gen220 7y ago

I haven’t read most of the pieces awarded here, and I’m sure they’re all excellent. That being said, I want to call your attention to the winner for "Feature Writing", and recommend you to read it. Taub’s produced a heartbreaking, empathetic, and incredible piece, that tilted my perspective on the US government's handling of 9/11, and how the government and big (dis-)organizations work in general. Given his source material, it would have been easy (and justified) to construct the narrative into a tirade against the CIA. Instead, Taub takes a rather empathetic and detached frame of reference, and the result is a monument to the human toll of ruthlessly-executed ignorance. None of the people (victims or perpetrators) seem to fully understand their absurd roles: their actions driven by jumpy supervisors and acquaintances, who in turn are driven by a mix of fear, ideology and separation from "ground". And once the veil of ignorance is lifted, there are reputations and legacies to protect, bureaucratic boxes that "cannot" be unchecked. There's no undoing what's set in motion, because "undo" implies reflection and the admission of wrongdoing, which is something that we really struggle with as a society. It's a tragedy you see play out everywhere, and this is a particularly poignant and tragic case, beautifully presented. If it isn't a case study already, it ought to be one. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-darkest-secret https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-da...)

thundergolfer 7y ago
Thanks for your comment. I read the piece, and it was worth the time. After so many words about their shared story, seeing that photo of Wood and Salahi together was quite arresting.
acqq 7y ago
The story about a Guantanamo interrogator converting to Islam is hardly something I, as an atheist, would find motivating in any way. It is not the only story of such kind of conversion, but sadly, none of such proves anything positive about that (or any other) religion, or people involved. I say sadly since those who believe otherwise are directly primed by the beliefs common only in very religious societies, like the U.S., and not in the rest of the world.

op03 7y ago

That Epstein cartoon is brilliant given that no one still seems to know what happened - https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new-yorker https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/barry-blitt-contributor-new...

ConanRus 7y ago

What a remarkable list of SJW activity. Well done, liberals.

generationP 7y ago
I wouldn't exactly call covering Catherine Pugh's corruption SJW activity. There seems to be a gradient among the Pulitzers running between the more concrete and local categories (investigative, news) and the more philosophical and big-picturey ones (commentary, criticism). The latter are a hopeless left-wing circlejerk (1619 project lol); the former are solid and, from what I'm seeing, generally well-deserved.

0xy 7y ago

Should anyone be proud of a Pulitzer considering they gave one out to the New York Times for covering up genocide in the USSR? [1] It would seem to me that the Pulitzer Prize is ethically bankrupt considering who you share this 'prestige' with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

jumelles 7y ago
This happened ninety years ago.

blhack 7y ago

How could you design a fitness function for news to ensure that it was accurate? Papers like The Financial Times have an obvious one: people are using these to inform themselves about business and investment. If FT was giving inaccurate data, it would have an obvious cost to the people who read it. But for papers like the NYT, what is the incentive to accurately report the news? It seems like by inaccurately reporting things, they'll make more money. This is a problem. How would you fix it?

chrisaycock 7y ago
I get the impression that your question is merely to raise FUD about The New York Times rather than to legitimately ask about quality control. I've downvoted you (as have others), but I'll go ahead and answer you in good faith all the same. The way a publication can ensure its quality is to charge for it. That is, rather than relying mostly on advertising (which is per article), rely on subscriptions. The kind of audience that pays for news will appreciate higher-quality journalism. That audience also must stick around for the long haul. That's why the best-regarded outlets tend to be newswires (AP, Reuters), business news (WSJ, Bloomberg), donation driven (NPR, PBS), and long-form stories (NYT, WP). Indeed, a quick check of NYT's latest 10K shows that they got over $1B from subscriptions (and growing) with an additional $500M from advertising (and shrinking). https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/71691/000007169120000003/a201910-kq4project.htm#sB18F8EC551135FA3AE59A7C5B6E414F6 https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/71691/000007...
- blhack 7y ago
  Ahh, no? I just used the New York Times and an example because it is by far the most popular newspaper in the country. It’s relevant to this post because they obviously won a bunch of awards, as the usually do. News and quality of news has been a major part of my life since my first ever semi successful project, which was a news aggregator I started over a decade ago. One of the mechanisms we tried then (before reddit existed as far as I know) was a sortof economy where each poster got a certain amount of tokens to “spend” on submissions and comments, and you could earn more tokens when people “paid” you for your quality contributions. Obviously it didn’t work. Since then I’ve tried computational linguistics approaches to this problem, which solves a problem, but not the fitness checking one I’m talking about here. And finally: my wife is a former political journalist, so obviously news and quality of news is a major topic in my life which I talk about, read about, and write about pretty regularly.

illiilliiililil 7y ago

The 1619 Project was such an awful bit of journalism. Totally not surprised it won a Pulitzer.

phantarch 7y ago
The entire project did not win, just one story from it by one person: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-york-times https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nikole-hannah-jones-new-yor...
mulmen 7y ago
I don't understand the usage of awful here. Are you using it to suggest the journalism is good and deserving of recognition (confusing) or that the Pulitzer is an award for bad journalism?
- djannzjkzxn 7y ago
  I believe that illiilliiililil is expressing a somewhat complex set of opinions: 1) They genuinely don’t like the 1619 project. 2) They understand that the Pulitzer is supposed to be an award for good journalism. 3) They believe that journalism about some subjects is more likely to win a Pulitzer without being the best by illiilliiililil‘s standards. You could compare it to the concept of an “Oscar bait” movie: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait I’m not sure I agree with this criticism - I think exploring tough subjects can lead to great work that is especially deserving of praise.
  - thedudeabides5 7y ago
    On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-th...
7y ago

jpxw 7y ago

The ligatures, for example in “metaﬁctional”, are broken on this site for me (they appear in the wrong font)

panabee 7y ago

fascinating fact: the pulitzer prize, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, is named after a newspaper publisher infamous for yellow journalism. by the end of his career, however, joseph pulitzer had reformed himself and started producing outstanding journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer

forgingahead 7y ago
Sort of like: "The Enron Prize for good corporate accounting" "The Benedict Arnold medial of Patriotism" "The Lucrezia Borgia Best Cocktail award" etc
- wp381640 7y ago
  or in 80 years time the prestigious Murdoch Award for excellence in journalism

dntbnmpls 7y ago

The Pulitzer Prize was created by the founder of yellow journalism ( AKA 1800s fake news ) - Joseph Pulitzer. Is this a prize that journalists or journalism should be supporting? It would be a like a physics award created by a flat earther. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize But I guess congratulations are in order.