Why Do Journalists Care About the Pulitzers When Readers Don't?

It's a reaction I often see after newspapers run their list of the winners in the biggest prize journalism has to offer: the Pulitzers.

It may be the first line in the obituary of every journalist who wins one, but that only shows that obituaries are a form usually featured best in newspapers. Because each time the list of winners goes up, there is the resultant drizzle of blog posts and columns from people criticizing the awards process and the newspaper executives who get so worked up about them.

As someone who has helped establish journalism contests in Pittsburgh, New Jersey and the Tampa Bay area, I can tell you that awards help encourage journalists. And when journalism's highest honor goes to incisive reports about Walter Reed Hospital, the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney, toxic chemicals in products imported from China, faulty regulation of consumer products and the operation of civilian security contractors in Iraq, it only encourages journalists everywhere to swing for the fences.

These are stories which spawned major headlines worldwide when they were first printed and were dissected on media outlets ranging from local TV shows to The Daily Show. So how does somebody like Gawker president Nick Denton criticize newspapers for honoring this work, saying these outlets should be working harder to chase readers?

If Denton really knew the media world he was criticizing, he would realize that most newspapers' problems these days aren't sliding circulation figures. Our problem is the decimation of advertising revenues; free classifieds online and the demise of the real estate industry is really buffeting our bottom lines.

This is the kind of hard news investigation which fuels the great turning wheel of 24/7 cable news and endless punditry on blogs and talk radio. Denton smirks about newspapers creating journalism to impress their colleagues -- he doesn't get that the Pulitzer's also are about inspiring colleagues to dig up the kind of stories that can change a nation's view of its vice president, its military or its war time conduct.

These are the kind of game changing stories every journalist should aspire to tell at some point in their careers, because they are the fuel that powers the engine of democracy. That Denton sees it solely as an exercise in self congratulation may say a lot more about his work than the awards he's criticizing.