Eyes on the Prize

"Journalism’s Prize Culture" by Alicia Shepard, in American Journalism Review (Apr. 2000), Univ. of Maryland, 1117 Journalism Bldg., College Park, Md. 20742–7111.

"We are the most self-congratulatory industry this side of Hollywood," says Peter Leo, a (prize-winning) columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He’s talking about the news biz and its well-known fondness for showering itself in awards. In the frenzy for journalistic Oscars, are readers getting shortchanged? asks Shepard, a (prize-winning) senior writer for the American Journalism Review.

Some 230 newspapers and 14 syndicates and chains submitted 1,516 entries (and $75,800 in handling fees) for this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. There also were 650 entries for the TV and radio equivalent (the Alfred I. duPont awards), and 1,320 print entries and 60 online ones for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Awards. And those are just the most soughtafter laurels. There are at least 200 national contests, and scores of state and local ones.

"Nothing illustrates the powerful passion for prizes quite so vividly," Shepard says, "as the fact that for months on end, worrying about contests will be someone’s full-time job" at many large news organizations, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer (which won many Pulitzers during the 1970s and ’80s, under editor Gene Roberts). The payoff? Reporters who bear the "Pulitzer Prize-winning" tag usually find their services in greater demand, while winning newspapers take on new (if not necessarily permanent) allure for ambitious scribes and editorial overseers, near and far.

Defenders argue that the prizes not only reward deserving journalists but spur others to do better, including even publishers. "Newspapers get embarrassed when they don’t ever win," says Roberts, now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. "That’s a pretty good signal to send. The message is: They could be winning if they spent time, money and newshole [space for  news] on good stories."

Others worry that the frantic pursuit of prizes distracts news organizations from more important, less glamorous work. "Rather than devoting buckets of money to a knock-’em-dead five part series that has Pulitzer or duPont written all over it," writes Shepard, critics "say resources might be better spent on more local gumshoe reporting or daily beat reporting." And for those already in those essential jobs, it can be demoralizing to see designated "stars" given oodles of time to work on megaprojects remote from "a paper or station’s core responsibilities."