The Washington Post deservedly won a string of six Pulitzers yesterday. They won for, among other things, the scarily fascinating series on Vice President Dick Cheney and the power he wields by Jo Becker and Barton Gellman.
They won for a strange and wonderful little feature that you might have missed about what happens when Joshua Bell, one of nation’s great classical musicians, gets persuaded by the Wa Po to play violin in the DC metro to see if anyone will pay attention….(and Post Writer Gene Weingarten writes about it).
And they won for the essential series in which Dana Priest and Anne Hull , together with photographer Michel du Cille, broke open the Walter Reed military hospital scandal.
Before this win, Priest won a previous Pulitzer for her fabulously gutsy, coverage of the CIA’s secret prisons and practice of extraordinary rendition.
Anne Hull has been short-listed for the Pulitzer multiple times for her terrific reporting and writing in such insightful series as”this one about Being Young and Gay in Real America.
Sometimes the good guys really do win. In this case, it was the great girls who won.
************************************************************************************
Other heartening wins were Junot Diaz for fiction for the The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao…..
…and a Special Citation to Bob Dylan for “…his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
PS: I’m happy because Priest and Hull are in LA later this week and are coming to guest lecture at one of my USC classes. (Woo-hooo!!!)
Priest and Hull are in LA later this week and are coming to guest lecture at one of my USC classes.
I envy your students! Congratulations. Not sure what you did, or how you did it, to pull that one off, but WELL DONE!
Want a Pulitzer? Don’t be a conservative and write something bad about the U.S.
Celeste, the left-wing indoctrination of journalism students needs to stop. The jounalism school should have affirmative action to bring in conservative students and to have conservative journalists speak. Consider it like “racial fairness,” where efforts were made to recruit black students and have black speakers.
I guarantee you that no student in your class will admit to supporting Republicans. It’s unlikely that any would, but it’s a certainty that no one could endure the peer pressure to admit it.
I have to say that I was somewhat taken aback that the Washington Post actually supports as much good journalism as is evident in these awards. I rarely, if ever, read it because on a daily basis it’s national political reporting, editorial and op-ed departments are about as bad as it gets from a major paper. It’s also telling that several exposes of problems at Walter Reed appeared in the on-line Salon magazine two years before the Post picked up the story. Not to detract from the good work of these Pulitzer winners, but Walter Pincus is the only reporter at the Post I have consistent respect for because he’s been willing to call his editors out for operating as little more than stenographers for whatever administration happens to be in power. I mean, a series on Deadeye Dick is all well and good, but 2007 was a little late to come to Jesus on that one, especially after publishing dozens of the kind of crap, badly vetted reports that, in effect, helped prime the country for Cheney’s desire to invade Iraq on the basis of deliberate disinformation.
Here’s a clip from Matt Miller on The Post’s notion of journalism:
“I don’t think that if you sat in on page-one meetings over the course of six months,” says Steve Coll, managing editor of The Washington Post, “you would hear any discussion about ‘We ought to do this because we want to put it on the map.’ You have to see the media as chronicling the public square. When nobody shows up in the public square to talk about what you would wish them to talk about, is the person standing in the back with an open notebook the structural cause of that?” (end clip)
The answer is, of course, that a guy “standing in the back with an open notebook” isn’t the structural cause of deficiencies in our public discourse, but any journalistic enterprise that sees it’s mission as, essentially, “standing in the back with an open notebook” IS a structural cause of degraded discourse and ought to be put out of its misery.
Overall, the paper is a national disgrace. Their ombudsman is particularly worthless and does little more than consistently make excuses for what is more often than not journalism that apparently takes pride in its mediocrity and does the country a terrible disservice. The Post is most notable for it’s cowardice and ideological feality to the Beltway “establishment.” If it’s a paper of record it’s the record of self-satisfied, blindered “conventional wisdom.”
Also, on the music awards the Pulitzers have a knotty history. They disgraced themselves in 1965 when they passed over nominee Duke Ellington. Then they tried to make it up with a special citation years later. They first recognized jazz as a legitimate musical art form when they gave Wynton Marsalis an award for his composed “oratorio” Blood on the Fields. Ornette Coleman is the only guy I’m aware of who ever got an award for producing music that was improvised or vernacular. Since the journalistic pulitzers cover every aspect of news endeavor imaginable, including cartoons, and there are five or six literary categories, maybe the Pulitzers should consider having at least two or three music awards so that the under-recognized contemporary classical composers can get recognition every year, but also making room for jazz and “popular” artists/composers. Maybe their panel could make some sense out of the way they recognize musical accomplishments. At this point it’s almost silly to give Bob Dylan a Pulitzer Prize. He doesn’t need it for validation and it makes the Pulitzers look time-worn and out of their element when they step over the line from rewarding good current journalism into the arts.
Be sure to have Pulitzer winner Steven Pearlstein speak to your class.
I guarantee you that no student in your class will admit to supporting Republicans.
Maybe if they had lobotomies they might.
Having a lobotomy is better than having a whole brain stuck up your rear-end.
I’m not that flexible for the latter, but I’ll take your word as first hand experience for the former.
Oh, so what comes out of your mouth just smells like your head’s been up there.
and don’t forget Californian Bob Hass’ win in poetry for his “Time and Materials” – a powerful collection marked by range and compassion.
here’s one from the book:
title:
“Ezra Pound’s Proposition”
Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
“How about a party, big guy?”
Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam’s great turbines, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detroit, financed
By Lazeres Freres in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
Enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Francisco
Or Halliburton of Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.
Maybe you need a lobotomy to get a Masters in Accounting but John Fund majored in Journalism at Sacramento State and Pat Buchanan has a Masters from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism (those evil Pulitzer givers!). Its Early and I’m too lazy to Google but there are two promenent Conservative writers that I can think of off the top of my head who went the J-School route.
On the other hand the fact that the Pulitzer Committee decided to give Michael Ramierez yet another award for editorial cartooning shows that standards in that department have really deteriorated. Where once we had the likes of Herblock, Bill Mauldin, Conrad, and Oliphant now we have guys who can’t even draw!
Oh, so what comes out of your mouth just smells like your head’s been up there.
The preceding non-sequitur has been brought to you by Newsmax.
Give it a rest, Randy. You’re such a bore…plus, you never catch the jokes.
For reg – Pulitzer Makes the Right Choice Ramirez’s win is the first time since 1998 that a Pulitzer has been given to a cartoonist with even moderately conservative opinions. The committee has similarly been biased against right-leaning columnists as Brent Bozell noted last year: “Any conservative student who aspires to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist should really try another line of work.”
You’re such a bore…plus, you never catch the jokes.
if I’m such a bore, Woody, why are you awake?
Maybe it’s the piss-poor quality of your jokes, like your consistently piss-poor grasp of the truth.
On to important things….
A film sure to be liked by reg, rlc, and Celeste.
An Oscar winner for sure.
Sorry. Here’s the link: Oliver Stone’s ‘W’
I know you are, but what am I.
lots of theater today – sort of vaudeville
Read Jill Stewart’s “L A Residents Slam SP40, Clear Channel Shakedown,” (and the weird linkage between the two), in the L A Weekly’s/ L A Daily Blog. Talk about cool chick reporters, that was posted practically in real time. I’m still shaking my head too after watching that bit of weirder than real “theatre.”
Jamiel Shaw’s Family at Los Angeles City Hall speaking in front of Los Angeles City Clowncil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gK-uAruoI
‘
WBC its good to know that Stewart is still as silly as ever. Maybe she could do a threesome with Ken and John at KFI!
It was a shock to read this actual headline in our county paper today: County Democratic Party is growing weekly, and now consists of over 80 members
I didn’t realize that we were being overrun by liberals.
Fact that Jill is driving all the mired-in-the-60’s types nuts shows she’s on the right track, good for her! Marc Cooper must really love her, as his Editor no less. But fact that she lets him rant and ramble shows how open-minded she is, compared to the “thought police.” But even this bunch can’t refute her, she’s too smart and logical, so they just call her the usual names. She’s had some missteps finding her voice, but she’s pretty consistent and stands way ahead of the pack.
Regardless of generational vintage, there’s one person here clearly and compulsively “mired in the ’60s” (who also happens to be a nut who “rants and rambles.)
Mirror, mirror on the wall…
“Fact that Jill is driving all the mired-in-the-60’s types nuts …………..”
**************
Get her an exorcist and remove the Che Guevara demons.
Sincerly,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
perfect: mention jill, and get 3 knee-jerk snarky responses from 3 mired-in-the-60’s dogmatic thought police.
Nobody could pay me enough to “police” your thoughts…
but you can’t resist another pointless, snotty, shot to prove what uncouth low-lifes some of you pride yourselves on being. of course it goes with the predictably programmed mind-set. being predictable and boring is one thing, even comical in its inevitability, but the vile mentality which requires shooting off 4-letter words and gratuitous invectives, proud contempt for “bourgeois manners” of any kind, is the kind of thing that makes me ashamed to be associated w/ some “Americans.” (thank goodness you never actually go anywhere.)
I envy WBC’s way with words.