Welcome to my first post at HuffPost. I'll be writing mainly about Iraq and the media (see reference to my new book, hailed by Arianna, below) and politics, but first:
It's been a ritual at the magazine I edit, Editor & Publisher, for about half a dozen years. Every year, jurors who pick the finalists for the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism are sworn to secrecy after they make their three choices in each category -- for this is a rare competition which does not name the nominees until the winners are announced in April. Every year the judges are told to clam up and every year (since they are all journos) they leak like crazy. So our Joe Strupp has been tracking down the leaks every year and we have been first to put up a nearly-complete list time after time -- with almost never an error.
This year, it looks a little different. The jurors finished their work at Columbia U on Wednesday and usually by now we have our near-complete list. But the gag rule has worked better than usual (and some of the biggest yappers have taken buyouts), so Strupp has had to toil to even come up with four categories. We have that story up on our site now, at www.editorandpublsher.com, with surely more to come -- check back here for updates.
This is what we have so far: The New York Times is doing quite well in a handful of categories.
Investigative
1.The New York Times -- Toxic Pipeline
2.Chicago Tribune -- Product Safety
3.The Denver Post -- Destruction of Evidence
Explanatory
1.The New York Times -- DNA
2.The Boston Globe -- Global Warming
3.The Oregonian -- Computer chips
Breaking News
1. The Washington Post -- Virginia Tech
2. The New York Times -- Bronx fire
3. Idaho Statesman -- Larry Craig
National Reporting
1. Washington Post
2. The New York Times
3. Chicago Tribune
"The much-praised Walter Reed Army Hospital series in The Washington Post is a Public Service finalist, while The New York Times is among the finalists in the International category for its Iraq reporting," Strupp reports.
-- NOTE: I'll be posting here in the future on issues raised in my new book, just published (and hailed by Arianna, Bill Moyers and others), So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. It features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joe Galloway.
See you around. My email: gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com.