FAILURES OF MEMORY, NOT OF LOVE: Congratulations to the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten on his second Pulitzer Prize win of the past three years -- this time, for his wrenching, compassionate take on the question of what kind of person forgets a baby? which we discussed last March. Among the other winners discussed here: the NYT's Don't Text and Drive series.
The winners are all here, and while the particulars of some may be beyond this blog's normal scope, good journalism is always going to be worth heralding and supporting. (Of note: two of the three nonfiction book winners went to books pertaining to finance -- Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World and T.J. Stiles' bio of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The other winner, for general nonfiction, was David Hoffman's The Dead Hand on the Cold War arms race.)
I will just congratulate Mr. Weingarten on a well-deserved win, due to my reaction to another person from the Post winning being a huge ol' pile of flabbergasted "Seriously?"
ReplyDeleteThe other interesting one is the drama prize going to "Next To Normal," the first musical to win since "Rent," and the result of an overruling of an either "no award" or choice of one of the other finalists by the nominating committee by the Pulitzer Board.
ReplyDeleteI know which one you mean. I agree. But that's not a discussion for here.
ReplyDeleteWell-deserved for Gene. Such a powerful article. I had just posted it on FB page.
ReplyDeleteJennifer Higdon winning for music is a good win.
ReplyDeleteAnd Lords of Finance is a very good read.
Agreed completely.
ReplyDeleteWho else was nominated? I thought the Brother and Sister plays were SOOOOO worth it.
ReplyDeleteand totally was not in the running. But Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety was amazing!
ReplyDeleteFinalists were Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play," "<span>The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity"</span> by Kristoffer Diaz and "<span>Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo"</span> by Rajiv Joseph. The only one of the three I saw was the Ruhl play, which I liked, but didn't think was Pulitzer-worthy.
ReplyDeleteI find the Next to Normal win very interesting. I think it was a great production, and had some fantastic writing and bold choices.
I was so rooting for the Enquirererer's Edwards' coverage. (This has nothing to do with my political views, and I know that's verboten. I just get annoyed with the "we can't report this story, but we can report that the Enquirer has reported it" thing the media does.)
ReplyDeleteFrom now on, I hope that references to Hank Williams Jr. are always followed by "son of Pulitzer Prize-winner Hiram K. Williams."
ReplyDeleteI was against it not for the reporting, which was certainly worthy of consideration, but for the writing, which was not.
ReplyDeleteOf these, I saw only Next to Normal, at Arena Stage prior to its Broadway transfer. I thought it was ... good ... certainly my favorite of the modren, present-day, de-part-mental-ized musicals I've seen over the past couple years. Bit of a buzzkill, though: "You won the Pulitzer! Well, no, the jury didn't think any of you deserved it, frankly, but hey, no, here you go."
ReplyDeleteThe flip side: In 1974, the Pulitzer jury voted unanimously to award the fiction prize to Gravity's Rainbow; the Board was not so impressed and opted for no award.
Yes, it was an outstanding article. Am I remembering right that he talked about what options could make a parent less likely to forget - some kind of alarm that would go off if the child was still in the seat or something like that? I'm going to hope that this article getting this kind of notice might make someone think about options to help limit these tragedies.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that they reveal that they wanted "no award." So the Board insisted on Next to Normal?
ReplyDeleteIt's unclear--they may have rec'd "no award," or one of the other plays that was named as a finalist, but the Board went outside the finalists deemed by the committee. This may have been because the other three finalist were not well-known/successful.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little surprised to see that Sarah Kaufman's dance criticism inspires this kind of reaction.
ReplyDeleteThat "who forgets a child" article is seared into my brain since we discussed it here last year. So powerful and heartbreaking. A well-deserved win.
ReplyDeleteSo glad he got recognition for this article. It was so powerful and moving, plus it has application to every parent everywhere. (And the chats and comments that provide insight to how he worked to write a piece that was powerful, cautionary, yet compassionate / impartial. )
ReplyDeleteAnd, FWiW, it made me cry, again, reading it again from this link. Is it too much that I want to buy giant tedy bears for everyone I know with a child in a car seat (in the spirit of "put a big stuffed toy in the car seat that only gets moved to the front seat when a child is in the car seat)?
I don't want to argue about the worthiness of the Pultizer winners in journalism. I think they're all worthy. But as a journalist myself, I'm disheartened by how it seems a smaller and smaller group of papers each year is dominating the awards. The Washington Post, New York Times or Wall Street journal has won the award for international reporting 12 of the last 15 years; the award for commentary 9 of the last 12 years; the award for explanatory journalism six of the last 10 years; the award for national reporting 8 out of the last 13 years. The New York Times alone has won the investigative reporting award three of the last four years. Throw in the the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe (owned by The New York Times), and you probably account for close to three-quarters of the Pulitzers.
ReplyDeleteNow, maybe it's just that these papers are so extraordinary, or that the politics of the judging weighs heavily in their favor. But I think it also means that fewer and fewer papers have the staff or the resources to pursue this kind of journalism. And it's not like blogs are filling this vacuum; there's not a whole lot of original reporting on the Web. So what happens? Do these stories just one day disappear? Do pieces like the one by Weingarten become extinct? Is that the direction in which we're headed?
So maybe we should put in a small extra hurrah for <span>The Bristol Herald Courier, circulation 30K, which won yesterday for a series on natural gas royalties. </span>
ReplyDeletehttp://www2.tricities.com/tri/special_sections/mineral_rights/
And their own front page has an awesome photo of them toasting each other with red Solo cups, no doubt trying out how "...and I'll stake my Pulitzer on it!" sounds.
More on the Drama drama.
ReplyDeleteThe chairmain of the jury has his say about
ReplyDelete... the blinkered New York mentality and the failure to appreciate new directions in playwriting.
Adam, that's what I get for starting a comment and then getting drawn into a thirty minute conversation before hitting "Post." :-)
ReplyDeleteFred, you might be interested in a proceeding the FCC has initiated regarding the future of journalism. Many in my neck of the professional woods wonder how exactly the FCC has legal jurisdiction in this area, but the proceeding is nevertheless likely to touch on the issues you raise regarding the resources to investigate and how a 21st-century journalism industry might look. This is a good place to start: http://reboot.fcc.gov/futureofmedia/. And this is probably the key document thus far: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-10-100A1.pdf
ReplyDeleteWhoa. What a slap to Next to Normal in the extremely thin guise of a compliment:
ReplyDelete"Nevertheless, congratulations to "Next to Normal." The musical's rock score may be generic and its understanding of mental illness simplistic, but there's a searching emotional quality to the piece, which was expertly staged by Michael Greif in a production dominated by Alice Ripley's raw, Tony-winning performance."
That is way harsh.
ReplyDeleteI saw Next to Normal about a year ago, without knowing much about the plot going in. I left the theater feeling like I'd gotten kicked in the stomach -- which I actually think is a good thing. I agree that it's not a perfect musical -- the rhyme schemes were what got me. But the emotional impact was tremendous and I have a great deal of appreciation for an ambitious musical about difficult subjects.