It was around this time last year when Politico reporters Josh Gerstein And Alexander Ward Obtained and Published A Draft SUPREME COURT TERMINATING EHEE Constitutional Right to Abortion. Never in the model of the national design decision of this magnetode leaked to the press. It was an overall first, one that others could not match and was eventually proven And it seemed to almost guarantee Politico, the upstart turned established media outlet, the first reporting-based Pulitzer Prize – journalism’s highest honor . Gerstein and Ward, as well Peter Canellos, Hailey Fuchs, And Heidi Przybyla, who worked on other stories submitted as part of the Pulitzer Package already won the George Polk Award for National Reporting a few months ago, and the Pulitzer seemed next.
Usually word starts trickling out of the Pulitzer board on the Friday before the Monday announcement. But this year, on Friday night, no one founded the TOP newspaper editors — KNew The winners, because the board decided to introduce a new procedure in which According to a well-known source, the winners were not notified until Sunday. This was ostensibly done to quell rumours, but it seemed to backfire as I heard it only led to a crazier phone game among journalists. Still, the consensus among the top reports going into Monday was that Politico would win a Pulitzer — so much so that Politico staffers received congratulations even from competitors before the announcement. “In the week leading up to the Pulitzers, I had a dozen or more conversations with Senior J. Our journalists at other publications said we were a lock,” a senior editor at Politico told me.
Yet a different story played out on Monday: The Pulitzers recognized the Washington PostThe Supreme Court’s coverage of abortion in the National Reporting category, but not Politico, which the jury moved to the Breaking News category. There, the Supreme Court’s reporting lost out to the staff of the Los Angeles Times, who won for reporting leaked racist conversations between members of the LA City Council. Politico was recognized as a Breaking News finalist along with contributors to The New York Times, which was recognized for its coverage of New York City’s deadliest fire in decades.
Journalists from various media immediately expressed their surprise on Twitter, from the Time‘ Charlie Savage tweetNo disrespect to the WP’s coverage of Dobbs’ fallout, which was excellent, but it’s hard to understand not at least also giving Politico a national Pulitzer. (Like moving to compete in the breaking news – that’s not what it was.)” And John Bresnahan, a former Politico reporter who left to help start competitor Punchbowl News, agreedcalling the stupidity “a mockery”.
This has been a much-discussed topic of conversation within Politico and other newsrooms since Monday’s presentation. There have even been some behind-the-scenes rumors that Politico was judged unfairly and whether judges had all the information every step of the way, due to a clerical error.
When Politico submitted its contribution to the National Reporting category ahead of the February jury meeting, there was a glitch in Columbia University’s system, according to two sources familiar with the situation. , the scoop of the initial Dobbs The person at Politico responsible for submitting the entry, after realizing the technical glitch, resubmitted the Politico entry and received confirmation from Columbia, which oversees the Pulitzers, that the entire Politico entry had come through, said the source.
Apparently this was not the case. I’ve been told that on the first day of judging, in February, the Pulitzer clerk Marjorie Miller was made aware that Politico’s entry did not contain all stories; only the partial version had found its way to the jury. It was also on the first day of judging that judges in the Breaking News category were told that the Politico entry was to be moved from National to their category.
Miller insists the outage did not influence the decision to move Politico’s entry from National to Breaking News. “Many packages have been entered in multiple categories and many are moved by juries or by the board,” she said in an email to Vanity purse. “The breaking news really wanted it and National had to make some choices, so this was a win-win for them.” Miller added: “The full package was considered by both juries and is what was given to the board. It had its best shot in the breaking news as the final news piece of it was the strength of that submission, as the quote points out. — like if this happened in the past. Miller didn’t address that question.)
“We heard through informal channels at the time that there was a rather important procedural issue that changed the package submitted by POLITICO,” Brad Dawn, Politico’s chief spokesman said so Vanity purse. “Disappointingly, we have not heard from anyone then nor from anyone at the level of the Pulitzer staff or board in an official capacity since we acknowledged the error or issued an explanation, but we hope it will be soon .”
In each Pulitzer category, the process is the same: the judges shuffle three finalists to the board, and then the board chooses one winner. Each jury writes a report on the three finalists, but they do not rank the three finalists based on who they think should win; the board comes to that decision itself. (The board also does not know the names of the jury members; their names are not made public until after the award ceremony.)
