Pulitzer Prizes got handed out today, and my local tabloid, The Philadelphia Daily News, winning a prize should have been the big story (the DN has always been considered the weak sister to the Inquirer, which used to win Pulitzers all the time.) But there is a bigger story: Pro Publica, an on-line non-profit investigative reporting outfit, took home one of the big prizes. It is the first time an on-line news organization has ever won a Pulitzer Prize.
More below the fold:
Many of you will remember the story for which Sheri Fink won the Pulitzer Prize. Co-published, on-line at Pro Publica, and in print in the New York Times Magazine, it detailed the wrenching choices faced at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Here is a link to the story.
Pro Publica might be legitimately considered the talented step-child of the carnage which has torn through the convention print media market in the last several years. Founded with seed money from the former CEOs of the Golden West Financial Corporation, the news organization has been staffed with strong talent, starting with Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and, before yesterday, already included among its 28 reporters and editors, 4 previous Pulitzer Prize winners.
(This Wikipedia post provides further details.)
Although, obviously, a Pulitzer Prize is the crown jewel of reporting, it is not the only award Pro Publica has won since beginning to publish during the summer of 2008. As outlined in this story in the dearly departed Editor & Publisher, Pro Publica also was awarded the Selden Ring Investigative Prize, for a story co-published by Pro-Publica and the LA Times regarding
abuses of insurance coverage for the huge number of private contractors in war zones.
You will note that, in each instance, Pro Publica collaborated with an existing media enterprise. This is a pattern you should expect to see continue. From Wikipedia:
In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and the news partners work together on a story. Recent news partners have included 60 Minutes, CNN, USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Albany Times Union, the Newark Star-Ledger, the New York Sun, Huffington Post, Politico, Salon.com, Slate, MSN Money, MSNBC.com, Reader's Digest, Business Week, and Newsweek.com among others.
As a matter of fact, the prize-winning reporter on the Selden Ring-winning story is a former reporter for the LA Times.
So continue to look for this talented bench of free agents pop up on the scene, as they did just this Sunday, as part of the line-up on NPR's This American Life, with a story about how a Chicago-based hedge fund's gaming of the CDO system helped keep the housing bubble inflated long enough for it to have a spectacular failure which nearly brought the system down, and how the bankers played along.
Is this the future of American journalism? We'll see. In the meantime, keep your eye on Pro Publica, for those stories which the MSM no longer has the investigative muscle to investigate and popularize.