Pulitzer Prize

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Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal.

The Pulitzer Prize is an American award for predominantly liberal journalism. There are other associated awards also called Pulitzer Prizes for other areas such as literature. In all, 21 Pulitzer Prizes are given out each year. The Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal is awarded each year to the American newspaper that wins the Public Service category of the journalism competition. The awards are named after Joseph Pulitzer who bequeathed a legacy to Columbia University in 1911.

Background

The awards are administered by Columbia University[1] with the winners of the Pulitzer Prize being determined by The Pulitzer Prize Board.[2] They often are awarded to liberal works. For example, in 2007 the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting was awarded to Charles Savage for his attack on George W. Bush's use of signing statements.[3] In fact, over 15 years earlier Bush's father also attached statements to bills that he signed. One of two honored finalists for the same prize was a work claiming that an innocent man was subjected to the death penalty.[4]

Only U.S. citizens are eligible to apply for the Prizes in Letters, Drama and Music (with the exception of the History category in Letters where the book must be a history of the United States but the author may be of any nationality). For the Journalism competition, entrants may be of any nationality but work must have appeared in a U.S. newspaper published at least once a week, on a newspaper's Web site or on an online news organization's Web site.[5]

Questionable winners

In 1921, Louis Seibold of the New York World was given access to Woodrow Wilson for an interview, for which Wilson was later revealed to have been incapacitated by a stroke. The entire interview was a fabrication.[6]

In 1932, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for a set of stories about the Soviet Union which were published in the New York Times. These articles denied the famine which killed millions in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor. At the insistence of Joseph Stalin they misled the world about this genocide. Amid growing conservative criticism of this award and a request for independent review by the New York Times, Mark Von Hagen (Professor of Russian History at Columbia University), reviewed Duranty's work and declared that "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away."[7] However, the New York Times refused to relinquish the award and the Pulitzer Prize committee refused to rescind it.

References

  1. The Pulitzer Prizes
  2. Current Board
  3. 2007 Pulitzer Prize: Charlie Savage, National Reporting, Boston Globe
  4. This honored finalist was work by "Maurice Possley and Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune for their investigation of a 1989 execution in Texas that strongly suggests an innocent man was killed by lethal injection." Pulitzer Prize Winners
  5. Frequently Asked Questions
  6. 10 journos caught fabricating, Politico
  7. N.Y. Times urged to rescind 1932 Pulitzer, USA Today

See Also

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

External links