Columbia University announced the winners of the 86th annual Pulitzer Prizes for journalism Monday. Every major metropolitan daily newspaper ran an article Tuesday about the awards. Instantly, news services like the New York Times (after winning seven of the awards) became their own subject matter.
The first story the Times posted online detailed their own successes rather than the overall theme of the awards: Sept. 11 coverage. Its first online headline, “New York Times Wins a Record Seven Pulitzer Prizes,” differed greatly from the Reuters wire story, an unbiased, “Three Papers Get Pulitzers for Sept. 11 Coverage.”
Sure, seeing your name in print is cool, and even the very mocking headline on this story is a little amusing to Herald staffers. But usually the news media shies away from overtly self-promotional coverage. Apparently, the Pulitzers are a high-stakes exception.
The Wall Street Journal’s Tuesday front-page brief on the awards begins, “The Wall Street Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, given for its coverage of Sept. 11 after the staff was driven from its offices across the street from the World Trade Center.”
The wire stories and headlines published in smaller publications focused on the big theme of the awards: All were awarded for coverage since Sept. 11.
State Journal Investigative Reporter and UW Journalism Lecturer Andy Hall said most of the content receiving awards regarded the attacks or their aftermath.
“It’s hard for me to believe all of the year’s best journalism happened since Sept. 11,” he said. “That basically leaves out nine months of the year.”
While the events of Sept. 11 may have provided extraordinary circumstances for the Pulitzer board to consider, this year’s rampant self-promotion by newspapers is nothing new.
A handful of news organizations had even prepared weeks ago for tooting their own horns. A bitter battle of op-ed pages between the Seattle Times and Wall Street Journal ignited when the Journal editorialized that an investigative series the Times ran should not be considered for one of the awards. The “journalist and cancer survivor” Laura Landro wrote for the Wall Street Journal March 19 arguing that the Times’ series under consideration “should be used as a textbook case on how the media can convey biased and misleading information about biomedical research,” rather than take a Pulitzer.
Sometimes, major metropolitan daily papers are obligated to cover their own business moves, like mergers, acquisitions or Supreme Court cases that affect media. The Pulitzers have become the best example of this phenomenon.
Certainly, winning was a business move. The $7,500 attached to each award — except for the award for public service, in which a gold medal is given to the paper — seems paltry in comparison to the pride, reputation and advertising dollars at stake in what has become an Academy Award-esque battle for journalism Pulitzers. Case in point: The Wall Street Journal won one of the Pulitzers they sought. The Seattle Times did not.
The prestige attached to Pulitzers, literary or journalistic, is only growing. Does that make using the power of one’s own newsprint to get a prize any less wrong? Didn’t journalism used to be a public service? Businesses engage in self-promotion everyday, and it is necessary. But most journalists would say it is not part of their job or role in the world.
