[pulitzer prize clarifications]

The other day I blogged about changes to the Pulitzer prize terms; now included are online-only news organisations (rather than demanding that online-content only be accepted from organisations that also had a print version). Since then Simon Owens has drawn my attention to some developments . Simon was able to interview Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler for a PBS article and then speak with Salon, Slate and ProPublica to gauge their reaction to the news.

From the PBS article:

"I spoke to Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler to find out what kind of entrants the Pulitzer Board is looking for. He told me that a special committee had made recommendations for the changes earlier this year and in November the board adopted them.

"We're not about the business of looking around the country to identify specific organizations," Gissler said. "We leave it up to the entrants to meet our criteria."

In other words, the burden of proof lies on the news organization to provide ample evidence that it meets all the qualifications for the award. Each entrant must submit a detailed cover letter with each entry, and Gissler said that the organization would have to make the case that it adheres to strict journalistic standards and engages in original reporting.

Pressing further, I asked whether sites like Salon, Slate and the Huffington Post would qualify.

"I'm not sure if they all qualify," he replied. "I think you have to determine if they're primarily original news reporting. We're really trying to push the burden on the entrants and not try to sit here and speculate about an entry that may or may not be let in."

He did, however, confirm that a blog could hypothetically qualify. If one or two people call their website a text-based newspaper, would it be eligible?" he said. "Blogs tend to fall into three categories. There are news reporting blogs, there are commentary blogs, and there's a hybrid version of the two. If they're text-based and meet our criteria, then they probably could compete. But it would be up to them to satisfy the criteria."

[...]

"NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen showed similar skepticism in a series of posts on his Twitter account. In a message to me he asked if a blogger known for insightful opinion could win the award for commentary even though she doesn't engage in original reporting. When I responded that she probably wouldn't qualify, he replied, "Oh, I see. If it's commentary at a reporting based news organization, [you're] golden. [It's] the derivation that counts."


Read the entire article here where Simon develops the conversation and presents some interesting responses from other key people involved in journalism. You can also join the conversation by answering some of Simon's questions:

"What do you think about the new eligibility for Pulitzer Prizes in journalism? Are they open enough or should they include more entrants? How would you define who should be eligible for Pulitzers?"