Pulitzers 2019

Note: The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded yesterday for excellence in journalism in 14 categories, plus literature and music. The top award, for public service, went to the South Florida Sun Sentinel for its coverage of the Parkland high school shooting. The Capital Gazette, which lost five staff in a newsroom shooting, received a special award. Click here for a full listing of this year’s prizes in journalism, first awarded in 1917.

“I want to break with tradition and offer my sincere admiration for an entry that did not win but that should give us all hope for the future of journalism in this great democracy. . . .”

“These budding journalists remind us of the media’s unwavering commitment to bearing witness — even in the most wrenching of circumstances — in service to a nation whose very existence depends on a free and dedicated press.

“There is hope in their example, even as security threats to journalists are greater than ever. And there is hope even as some degrade the media as an enemy to the very democracy it serves.

“Of course the press will endure, because, as the founding fathers knew well, there can be no democracy without it.”

—Dana Canedy, Pulitzer Prize administrator, recognizing 17 obituaries of Parkland high school shooting victims written by the staff of The Eagle Eye, “The Press Will Endure,” Pulitzer.org, April 15, 2019. 

• Editorial Comment: Keep the faith.

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Pastels

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Campus Public Radio Station Killed

“Thank you all for letting me into your morning commute, for telling me your stories of hope, tragedy, triumph and love. Thank you for letting me speak your truths through an omni-directional microphone. Thank you for letting me take your photos and for calling me in the morning to let me know it’s White-THORN not Whitehorn. I will forever hold KHSU in my heart and memory as a place of acceptance, peace and home to the hardest working folks I’ve ever met.

“What now, you may ask, will a local unemployed radio gal do in this crisis? I’ll survive. I always do.”

—Natalya Estrada, journalist and the last employee to leave public radio KHSU, which was summarily shut down by Humboldt State University on Thursday, in a statement to local media, “Last employee leaves KHSU,” North Coast Journal, April 13, 2019.

• Backstory: In an inexplicable and stunningly shortsighted and ham-fisted move, the Humboldt State University administration sent University Police to close down the campus public radio station on Thursday morning, and locked out its employees and volunteers, just days after an on-air fund drive. On Sunday, with no one to run the NPR station, KHSU was off the air for much of the day. 

• More? See “‘It’s a death in our community.’ Locals reeling after KHSU locks doors and streams Chico radio station,” Red-Headed Blackbelt, April 11, 2019.

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Little Dayglo School House

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

How to Fix a Squeaky Wheel

“It’s the criminalization of journalism by the Trump Justice Department and the gravest threat to press freedom, by far, under the Trump presidency, infinitely worse than having Donald Trump tweet mean things about various reporters at CNN or NBC. Every journalist in the world should be raising their voice as loudly as possible to protest and denounce this.”

—Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and co-founder of The Intercept, reacting on “Democracy NOW!” to the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London, April 11, 2019. Image: Screen capture from video of Assange being trundled from his seven-year sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London/CBS.

 

• Editorial Comment: When all the loud-mouths and opposition leaders are gone, then what? Paging George Orwell. . . .

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Darkness Falling

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

On Campus

“Only if universities maintain an atmosphere of free inquiry will they produce students who are independent leaders, capable of thinking for themselves, open to new ideas, and willing to follow arguments and evidence when they lead. A vibrant democracy and a dynamic economy need such people.”

—Richard T. De George, philosophy professor, University of Kansas, 2005.

 

• Editorial Comment: That’s exactly the kind of egg-headed, high-sounding liberal progressive claptrap that’s gotten us into this mess.

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Trillium Falls

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

One-Man Band

“I really believe that as large newspaper chains cut staff of small newspapers, and small newspapers wither and die, that’s going to cause major problems in communities. Somebody needs to pick up the slack and, at least in this community, I’m able to do that.”

 

—Darrell Todd Maurina, Waynesville, Missouri, news blogger who stepped up to fill the news void when the local newspaper died, in “Decline in readers, ads leads hundreds of newspapers to fold,” Associated Press, March 11, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Last voice in the old marketplace of ideas.

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Sailors at Rest

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Werd Nerds

“You could feel the excitement in the room when a slide appeared with the heading ‘HYPHENS!’ The AP is dropping the hyphen in such terms as ‘African American,’ ‘Asian American,’ and ‘Filipino American.’ 

“[AP editor Paula] Froke credited this change to the eloquence of Henry Fuhrmann, formerly the copy chief of the LA Times, who wrote, ‘Those hyphens serve to divide even as they are meant to connect. Their use in racial and ethnic identifiers can connote an otherness, a sense that people of color are somehow not full citizens or fully American.’” 

—Mary Norris, comma queen, “Dropped Hyphens, Spilt Infinitives and Other Thrilling Moments at the 2019 American Copy Editors Society Conference,” The New Yorker, April 2, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Punctuation is powerful. Proofreading symbols are playful.

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Greenery

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Obit

“Our editor, George Rodrigue, called me on Monday morning . . . . [H]e said he knew it was my regular day off, but would I mind coming in and writing the story? I said, ‘The layoffs story, you mean?’ When I hung up the phone after talking to him about the improbability of it, I laughed all day.

“Some people thought it was extraordinary that I wrote it. One of my sons said, ‘Dad, you get to write your own obit.’ I said, ‘It’s kind of perfect in its way.’”

 —Tom Feran, veteran reporter and editor whose 40-year career at the Cleveland Plain Dealer ended when he was laid off in March, “The Reporter Who Wrote About Layoffs at The Cleveland Plain Dealer After He Was Laid Off,” The New Yorker, April 5, 2019.

  

• Editorial Comment: Another death in the family.

• Fun Fact: The Plain Dealer, founded in 1842, was long Ohio’s largest newspaper. In the 1980s, Feran says, the PD’s arts and entertainment staff was about the same size as the entire newsroom is now — 33 unionized reporting/editing staff. “Plain Dealer lays off a third of unionized newsroom staff,” April 1, 2019.

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California Poppies

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Big Picture

“I like reporters, even if I haven’t always liked what they wrote about me. I figure that’s a pretty minor price to pay for a free press in a free society.” 

—Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006), 38^th U.S. president, 2005.

• Editorial Comment: No hard feelings.

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Spring Skunks

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

RIP

“Losing a newspaper is like losing the heartbeat of a town.” 

—Keith Pritchard, chairman of the board, Security Bank of Pulaski County in Waynesville, Missouri, whose local newspaper, The Daily Guide, died last summer, in “Decline in readers, ads leads hundreds of newspapers to fold,” Associated Press, March 11, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Town crier wanted.

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Little River

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard