Inside the Pulitzers

After a terrible year for journalism, after the inventions of Steve Glass and Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle, after the scandals of Tailwind and Chiquita, after the saga of Bill and Monica and Ken, after all that and more, a band of seventy-seven senior journalists and academics gathered at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for three eye-straining days in March and got to see something good about the profession - at last. They were the nominating jurors for the 1999 Pulitzer Prizes in journalism - and among them they studied 1,477 entries submitted by newspaper and wire service editors as the best of their best. And what did the jurors draw from this experience?

The most typical reaction came from Jeff Cohen, editor of the Times Union of Albany, New York: "Anyone who suggests there is a bleak future for newspapers in America just had to sit in that judging room. It was inspiring." To which David Rubin, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, added: "If you're a cynic, all you had to do was read the entries in Public Service. It would blow away all your cynicism. This restores your faith in journalism."

The jurors were divided into fourteen groups, from Beat Reporting to Feature Photography. Each group had five to seven jurors, whose job was to pick three finalists in its category. Those were then sent on to the Pulitzer board, consisting of twenty leading journalists, authors, and scholars, who in April chose the ultimate winners. The board is sworn to secrecy forever, but the rules permit the jurors to speak freely of their deliberations as soon as the winners are announced. So CJR interviewed more than half of the seventy-seven jurors (there were 63 men, 14 women), inquiring about their experiences and reactions, their surprises and lessons learned.

The field was rich, the competition tough. Mel Opotowsky, ombudsman for the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California, was in the Beat Reporting category: "Of the 150 entries we had in my panel, I'd say that only about 10 shouldn't have been there, and of the rest, 20 or 30 were serious serious contenders."

When making their choices, the jurors asked such questions as: Is the subject significant? Is this entry really original and breaking new ground? Did the story make a difference? "I found myself looking for results, as a way to separate competing entries," said David R Jones, a consultant to The New York Times after thirty-four years there, who was on the Investigative Reporting panel. "If an entry showed good work but had no consequences, I would find myself gravitating to another entry that had impact."

The Story of the Year- Clinton/Lewinsky - won very little. Some comments from various jurors: "I was so sick of that story." "The entries were all about the same." "Even the best of the coverage was flawed in some way." On the other hand, the vast majority of the Cartoon entrants focussed on The Scandal. Said Maria Henson, deputy editorial page editor of the Austin American-Statesman: "If I saw one more Clinton as Pinocchio cartoon, or one more Playboy bunny seal on the side of Air Force One, I'd be ready to leave the room."

And in the Commentary category, it was, as Robert Hodierne, national editor of the Newhouse News Service put it, "All Monica, all the way." A few sports columnists were seriously considered, but the Clinton controversy was dominant. Indeed, said Edward Pease, a Utah State University professor, "There were so many zippergate stories it was oppressive." The Commentary jury was divided among several candidates at first. Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner, said this of the eventual winner: "It was very hard after a year of this story to have it seem particularly fresh and relevant, but [New York Times columnist] Maureen Dowd managed to stay provocative, irreverent, and hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud, even now."

In general, what also appealed to jurors, said Morris Thompson, Knight Ridder's assistant foreign editor, who was on the Public Service panel, "was good, old fashioned reporting - finding something and pursuing it," instead of planning a grand project from the ivory tower.

That was the case with the New York Daily News, which won a Pulitzer for the third time in four years, this time for a series of editorials calling for the rescue of Harlem's landmark Apollo theater from financial mismanagement by some local power brokers. One of the jurors, Philip Gailey, editorial page editor of the St. Petersburg Times, called it "old-fashioned editorial writing at its best: You find a problem and pound away at it - nothing fancy." Echoed Susan Albright, who runs the Minneapolis StarTribune editorial pages: "The Daily News editorials were simplified, short, argued from the heart, and always in-your-face."

A most unusual editorial-writing entry was made by the Mobile (Alabama) Register. With a state election coming, the paper hired the former editorial page editor to travel through the South and write a series of editorials on why Alabama is far behind other states on so many social issues, and to link its plight with the state's sorry political leadership. "It was the favorite of nearly all the jurors," said Gailey, "until somebody pointed out that, after having gone to all the trouble to educate voters, the editors at the end of the series declared that they chose not to endorse either candidate for governor" because they disliked both of them. To the jurors, this was a cop-out. The moral: make choices, stay the course, have the courage of your convictions.