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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 4/10/2008 10:24:20 AM
Title: Big Three papers will dominate the Pulitzers
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From FRANK AHRENS, Washington Post: After our big Pulitzer win on Monday, there was some melancholy around the newsroom along the lines of, "Oh, this will be the last year this kind of thing will happen."

I said just the opposite.

I bet the Big Three -- us, the Times and the Journal -- will most likely
increase our dominance of the Pulitzers in coming years. Why? Because it's the mid-sized papers that have been/will be so hard-hit by cuts they will no longer be able to produce Pulitzer-caliber journalism.

Rupert Murdoch will pay for prizes at the Journal -- hell, it's probably an
in-your-face thing for him now. If the Journal doesn't win a bunch of
Pulitzers next year, in Rupert's first year, well, I wouldn't want to be
an editor there.

Don't think The Post isn't squeezing nickels. We are, and how. But The Post Co. has a revenue monster in Kaplan and even after the buyouts will still have enough firepower in our core areas -- National and Metro -- to keep producing consistent Pulitzer-quality.

And the Times, somehow, will maintain a big newsroom capable of winning Pulitzers.

Your small papers will still win the occasional Pulitzer for some heroic
two-person series on a coke-sniffing mayor, or when the local nuke plant
goes critical, but I'm guessing they had pretty much the same staff levels in 1980 as they have now. Indeed, given that small and community newspapers are the only ones showing a revenue increase in our industry, they might actually have better resources now than they had then.

It's the Charlotte Observers, the Miami Heralds, the Lexington Herald-Leaders (and, given their immense debt, perhaps the L.A. Timeses and
Chicago Tribunes) that were able to win Pulitzers in the past that will have little shot from now on. Without financial diversity, without being
part of a global media empire, papers of that size will have to make even more draconian cuts, preventing them from producing the sort of long-term projects that usually win Pulitzers.

(What will be interesting to see is if, by being unable to produce prize-winning journalism, those mid-sized papers will instead produce journalism that consumers find more valuable and is actually better for business. I don't know of any paper that gets a material "Pulitzer bump"
in circulation.) (Permalink)

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