Revising the Prize   

Shaking up the Pulitzers based on one year’s results is a bad idea.

Break up the Yankees.

That was the battle cry years ago, when the Bronx Bombers so dominated Major League Baseball that it seemed nobody else really had a shot.

Today the cry, at least in some circles, is break up the Pulitzers. Some are suggesting that the newspaper business' premier prize program be revamped. Rather than the current one-size-fits-all model, they ask, how about making the picks by circulation size, à la the National Magazine Awards? (See Free Press, page 10.)

Yes, the hegemony of the big hitters this year was pretty amazing. Twelve of the 14 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism went to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The N.Y. Times brought home a staggering seven, more than doubling the previous record. (The other two winners, Newsday and the Christian Science Monitor, aren't exactly the Canton Repositor either.)

Not only that, the behemoths racked up a disproportionate number of finalists.

Now I agree that there's something disappointing about the results. I love it when the little guys in Rutland, Vermont, and Great Falls, Montana, and Riverdale, the Bronx--or the medium guys in New Orleans and Baltimore and Dayton--strike gold. There's a lot of wonderful journalism taking place at news organizations that don't quite have the prestige and visibility of those at the top of the top tier.

But before we begin tinkering with the gold standard of journalism awards, I'd suggest taking a deep breath.

First, it's important to keep in mind that 2001 was an extraordinary year. September 11 was the major factor behind the juggernaut. After all, the terrorist attacks took place in New York City and Washington, D.C., where three of the big winners are based. But it wasn't purely a matter of home court advantage. Who else but an outfit like the New York Times has the money and resources to surround a story that's global and complex and ongoing?

So why not wait to see if we're dealing with a permanent shift or a glitch?

After all, the fact that a Pulitzer means the best regardless of size is part of its charm. When Portland wins a Pulitzer, there's no asterisk--it's No. 1. Being the best of the midsize papers, while nice, is not the same. Who remembers who won the NCAA's Division II basketball championship?

And it's not like there aren't other places where the work of regional newspapers (and smaller market broadcast operations) is recognized. There's no shortage of journalism contests, many broken down by size.

Once again this year it was my pleasure to attend the presentation of the Scripps Howard Foundation awards (see From the Editor, May 2001). Once again, I was dazzled by the passion and commitment of the winners, many of them from decidedly low-pro venues.

As for the New York Times' unprecedented harvest, I say right on. Sure the Times is our best newspaper, and a very rich one, so you'd expect it to go all out on a story of such magnitude. But the Times' performance was way beyond all out. The special A Nation Challenged section day in and day out, the "Portraits of Grief," the simply colossal volume of high-level coverage for months--this was simply stunning work. The Times could have done far less--and spent far less – and still have performed admirably.

In the NBA they call it "making a statement." That's what the Times did, big time.

The one nagging fear is that maybe the skewed results are due in part to the widespread cutbacks that marked the newspaper industry last year. Top-quality journalism is labor-intensive stuff. And when you lose people, the tendency is to focus on the day-to-day (which must be covered) at the expense of investigative and explanatory projects. Carried too far, that turns newspapers, to steal the wonderful phrase of Oregonian Editor Sandy Rowe, into "more TV on dead trees," which no one needs.

Then there's the whole question of journalism's prize culture (see AJR, April 2000). Critics allege that newspapers, at least some of them, put too much emphasis on winning prizes, that they produce massive, mind-numbing series with judges, rather than readers, in mind.

No doubt there's some truth to that. But more apt, in my view, is a quote by Poynter's Roy Peter Clark in a discussion in last September's AJR about the value of, or lack thereof, long stories (see "Treasure or Torture?").

The problem, observed Clark, "is not that there are too many enterprising and ambitious stories, but too few."

He may be on to something.