By Donna Shaw
American Journalism ReviewPublished: 9/22/2006
Excerpt:
The largest, most prestigious newspapers just seem to keep on
winning. Indeed, the list of all-time top Pulitzer-winning newspapers --
no surprises here -- starts with the New York Times (93 or 94 prizes,
depending on who's counting); The Washington Post (44, including three
awarded to members of the Washington Post Writers Group and not
counting the one that was awarded to Janet Cooke and then withdrawn);
the Los Angeles Times (39, including two for the L.A. Times Syndicate);
and The Wall Street Journal (31).
But an AJR analysis of the decades starting with 1960 also shows that
those four papers combined have dramatically increased their share of
Pulitzer largesse over the years. Consider: In the 1960s, the Big Four
won 15 percent of the journalism Pulitzers. Over the next three decades
they gradually increased their share, winning 22 percent of the prizes
in the 1970s, 24 percent in the 1980s and 32 percent in the 1990s. And
now, so far in this decade, they have won an astounding 52 percent of
the prizes. In 2002, the New York Times alone amassed seven Pulitzers.
This year The Washington Post garnered four and the New York Times
collected three. ...
... But why the recent upsurge? There is little doubt that September 11 is
a major factor. A brutally challenging, far-flung megastory like the
War on Terror plays to the strengths of the top national papers. But
many also fear that years of staff reductions and relentless
cost-cutting have taken their toll at regional papers across the
country, handcuffing efforts to do world-class journalism and handing
an even greater edge to the giants. ...
... Butch Ward, a distinguished fellow at the Poynter Institute and a
former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the now-defunct
Baltimore News-American, says that the big-paper hegemony is due in
part to a change in the way some newspapers view their mandate, with
fewer doing ambitious enterprise reporting.
"It gets hard when they aren't doing this sort of work anymore," he
says. "Is every paper in the country capable of hiring people who can
do the work? The answer is yes, but it depends on whether you're
willing to devote the resources necessary to do that work.
