Thursday, December 8, 2005

Pulitzers aren't just for dead trees anymore Does that mean we'll see a Pulitzer Prize weblog next year? Could be, if the blogger is based at a newspaper's online edition -- if I'm reading the rules right. A newspaper still has to be lurking in the background, but more of the Pulitzer Prizes for 2006 will be open to online stories and images as well as print content, according to the Pulitzer Prize Board announcement on Wednesday. The Public Service category already accepts a wider range of online material, including databases and interactive graphics, a policy begun in 1999. (Sidebar: Anyone want to take bets on the Hurricane Katrina coverage by the New Orleans Times-Picayune's NOLA.com's taking home more than one of this year's awards?) The 2006 rule change covers all 14 journalism Pulitzer categories, from investigative reporting to commentary and cartooning. Journalism prize entries continue to be open only to daily and weekly newspapers, and in most cases the award entries still must have a printed-newspaper component. (The non-journalism categories include Music, Arts and Letters.) Breaking News entries, either text or photography, now may consist entirely of material published online. (That sounds like a newspaper-based-blogger invitation to me.) Entries in other journalism categories must include material published in the newspaper's print edition. "The Board believes it has taken a significant step in recognition of the widening role of online journalism at newspapers," according to Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, quoted in the Pulitzer press release. He said the judges will "continue to watch the evolution of this medium." The Pulitzers began in 1917 under the terms of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer's will. Although there were no weblogs to contend with, he gave the prize board broad discretion to adjust the categories of prizes as times changed. The first online-related change was made in 1997, the 150th anniversary of Pulitzer's birth. The awards are announced at Columbia University every April. For any journalism students reading this to relax between final exams, don't miss the Pulitzer Prize Archives online, the past 10 years' winning stories in all categories. Click on the little gray "works" tab for each award to read the full text or see the photographs. Online or off, the winning entries show what both large and small newspaper organizations can do when they're at their best. With most browsers you can use the "archives" link on the Pulitzer home page, or click any of the dates in the top border framing all the pages. If you have trouble, I pulled this Archives direct link out of the site's "framed" layout to make sure I could reach the stories with my Palm computer, without losing its limited screen real estate to the frame menus. (It worked!) But even if you think framed websites shouldn't win prizes, the Pulitzer.org site does work on every larger screen I've tried. -- Note: I added most of my "blogger?" speculation after my first post. Apologies if the rewriting confused early-edition RSS subscribers. 4:00:55 PM    comment []

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