April 7, 2008
Washington Post Earns Six Pulitzer Prizes
The 2008 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and the Washington Post racked up an extraordinarily impressive six of them. It's no surprise that the Public Service category went to Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille for their investigative series into the poor conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. The Breaking News award for their coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings was also a good bet. Some of the other awards were slightly more surprising.
Jo Becker and Barton Gellman won the National Reporting award for their exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney's influence on national policy. Steve Fainaru took home the International Reporting award for his series on private security contractors in Iraq that operate outside most of the laws governing American forces. Gene Weingarten's staged experiment, where he had violinist Joshua Bell play inside a D.C. Metro station to see if anyone would notice him, was awarded for Feature Writing, and business columnist Steven Pearlstein won the Commentary award for relentlessly predicting the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
A full list of this year's Pulitzer winners can be found here. The Post fell just one award shy of tying the record for the most Pulitzers in a single year, which is held by the New York Times, having been awarded seven in 2001 2002 for their Sept. 11 coverage.
What do you think of all the Post's awards? The most controversial one is probably Weingarten's. We enjoyed the Joshua Bell story, but it was also criticized for being inherently gimmicky.
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tres cool. bravo gene weingarten. I love this "emperor's new clothes" kind of thing because honestly I think some of the "street musicians" are pretty darn good too.
Erik Wemple over at City Paper must be dying... dying I say, over this...
The Post is notorious for getting cakes for events like this...I can only imagine the size and number cakes being consummed over there this afternoon.
The NY Times record was set in 2002, not 2001. They were awards for the previous year.
I loved the Weingarten piece, and it is still having a lot of impact. Many musicians and music fans I know continue to circulate the article, and, more importantly, I continue to notice people stopping to appreciate musicians in the Metro, and maybe dropping a tip. There was a really good violinist at the Van Ness/UDC stop this Friday, and at least four people had stopped to enjoy his playing.
Can't wait to hear what Mr. Tony (Kornheiser) says about Gene Weingarten's win...
I have to say, I thought the Post's Cheney series was one of the more interesting journalistic pieces I've read in a while - not to take anything from the Walter Reed expose.
And congrats to Anne Hull for winning for the Walter Reed series. Hadn't she been a finalist (without winning) more than anyone else? About damn time - I remember her work with the St. Pete Times; she's always been a writer who gets your attention.
all great pieces.
Being a news junkie I feel that the Cheney, VTech and Walter Reed pieces were exceptional. But Bethesdaist has it right that Weingarten piece changed the way I walk around the city. So it totally deserves a recognition.
I think it's particularly nice this week since the Newseum opens on Friday.
For those keeping score at home, that would be 43 Pulitzer Prizes for the Washington Post, 0 Pulitzer Prizes for the Washington Times.
I am still holding out for a DCist Pulitzer Prize win.
Three words: man-size safe.
bravo post. for all the crap they (sometimes deservedly) get, they do know how to write stories.
I still can't believe they gave that guy from the Baltimore Sun a Pulitzer for the stories about those homeless killings..
The Weingarten piece may have been a bit gimmicky, but I've found myself telling many people about it. What's wrong with a gimmick, if it stimulates one to think twice about something important, like taking note of the everyday beauty of our surroundings and pausing to savor life.
I think it was the Dickensian aspect, RL.
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Great about the Pulitzers. Bully for them. Now how do we dock them for the crap they torture us with on the Op-Ed pages?
Specially on the Walter Reed bit, one should remember that the Post did not break this story. Now, they did do an extensive and detailed run of coverage on it. (And I personally appreciated their coverage in addition to what I had already found elsewhere.)
But I've heard Dana Priest describe how she got a tip, and how she followed the story and I imagine her story is true, but the fact is the story had already been broken by Salon in 2005 and 2006.
Now, the Post's coverage was good, reached a wider audience than Salon and their re-finding and publishing this news made an impact. The Pulitzer is not for "breaking" the story. But when one hears summaries of these stories, it may sound like the Post was the first to get into this.
In fact, they were following, as they often do.
Cool! I wonder how many Pulitzers they'll have to give back because they were plagiarized or completely made up?
Maybe now the Post will have enough money to do some decent local coverage in the Metro Section. I mean beyond the usual 6 pages, 5 of which being advertisements for Macys, SUVs, and real estate. And by "local" I mean something a little closer in that Virginia Tech.
The City Paper should get an award for shittiest journalism. I would like to be able to blame Creative Loafing for the Paper's decline, but they were already suckin' ass long before the takeover. Creative Loaf Pinching has simply hastened their downward spiral.
turkeyrotica? ok, if you're going to knock the city paper's journalism, we get to knock you for a shitty rip-off of a screen name.
I love that Weingarten got the Pulitzer. Same for Steve Pearlstein. Both are great writers.
Erotica animal pals REPRESENT!
City Paper's downtown reportage used to be solid, but now they seem caught in a race with the Post for Most Craptacular Local Coverage. Where the post skews handwringing suburban liberal who doesn't dare visit U Street because it's too "sketchy," CP goes for the "how clever can I whine" stance. I always get a kick out of the half-baked movie reviews that go on for three columns before they say anything about the goddamned movie, something inevitably precious and bitchy.
You can tell more about DC social and economic trends from the porno ads in back than you can from the reporting. FYI: One in the Pink, Two in the Stink XVII is a blatant ripoff of Buttman's Mexican Holiday XXII. I've already filed a complaint with the licensing authorities.
City Paper has movie reviews?
I hadn't read the Joshua Bell story and really enjoyed it. I'm all cynical now, but it took me back to when I first moved to DC from a smaller town. I was in line at the DMV (before they had the number-ticket system) and there was a woman lying passed out on the floor, right across the line I was waiting in. No one was paying any attention to her and some people were actually standing straddled across her as they got up to where she was lying across the line. Finally some paramedics came after 20 minutes or so and took her away. I was thinking, "what kind of place have I moved to?"
Although I didn't do anything to help her either...