Are the Pulitzers too political?
Will Bunch, of the Philadelphia Daily News, has one of the best MSM blogs in the country, which seems to prove that a non-reporter really can have something to say on a blog, and the average person really is smart enough to handle it.
Bunch on Tuesday developed a long-needed smackdown of the media, noting that not a single Pulitzer Prize went to someone who did some good old-fashioned digging; what we call an "enterprise story." They all, it seems, went to people and media organizations that did a little better job at covering the same stuff everyone else is covering, or -- as he put it better -- "we are pathologically unable to stop covering the exact same stories that everyone else is."
He raises the question about whether the Pulitzers have gotten too political; thus the blog's appearance in this space. His answer appears to be "no," but he delves into the WHY a little more closely than some journalists would like, when raising the question of why there's no real investigative reporting at the White House anymore, for example.
The minute they write such an article, they are persona non grata in the West Wing, and it's hard to cover the White House when the White House hates your guts. That's even more true on the local level.
Bingo. A fear of offending someone. Unhealthy for journalists. Unhealthy for democracy. I'll leave it to others to figure out why.
There's a campaign going on. It's not too late to get the inside track on Pulitzer 2007.
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