0:01

Welcome to stuff you should know, a production

0:04

of iHeartRadio.

0:11

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and

0:13

there's Chuck and Jerry's well, no, Jerry's

0:15

not here. Man talk about habit. Ben's

0:18

here. It's the reign of Ben still

0:22

and that makes this these days stuff you should know.

0:25

That's right. The episode in which

0:27

we talk about a major reward.

0:30

Yeah, that's not a leg lamp, but the

0:32

Pulitzer Prize. It

0:35

is a you know, it's an award with much

0:37

prestige attached. They will

0:39

be giving out the

0:41

next round on May eighth, probably

0:44

not too long after this episode comes out,

0:47

in twenty three different categories.

0:49

At a ceremony at Columbia

0:51

University in.

0:52

New York City, did you say Pulitzer?

0:57

Pulitzer? What do you say?

0:59

That's what I say now. I said Pulitzer

1:01

for the vast majority of my life.

1:03

Though, Do you know which is

1:05

right?

1:06

I think Pulitzer. Okay, yeah,

1:08

we've been corrected enough times. I think it is Pulitzer.

1:11

You got it right?

1:12

All right?

1:12

Good they are and we'll

1:14

go over all the categories. But what

1:17

you should know about the Pulitzer Prize is they are

1:20

distinguished works

1:22

of American works, Yeah,

1:24

in a variety of categories. And I

1:27

don't think even until yesterday

1:29

I fully realized that it was such a

1:32

strictly American award.

1:34

I didn't either, which is ironic because it was

1:36

the brainchild. It was

1:38

founded by Joseph Pulitzer, who was

1:40

a Hungarian immigrant. Yeah,

1:43

but loved America. Loved America

1:45

so much he moved to Missouri

1:48

and didn't leave for a while.

1:50

Yeah.

1:50

He was born into a wealthy family

1:53

April tenth, eighteen forty seven

1:55

and was a real like ambitious

1:58

dude. He came

2:00

over to fought to fight in the American Civil

2:02

War.

2:03

For the Union. Yeah that's something, and

2:05

did, in fact enlists for a year in the Lincoln

2:07

Cavalry.

2:08

But he became

2:10

a newspaper publisher at the age of twenty five,

2:13

and by the time he was thirty one, he was the owner

2:15

of this Saint Louis Dispatch, like a

2:18

major paper.

2:19

Yet no, the Dispatch is still around. Oh

2:21

yeah, yeah, that's amazing. I

2:25

didn't see how he ended up in New York,

2:27

but eventually he made his way to New York and

2:30

with his experience running a paper, took

2:32

over the world. The New York

2:34

World, which was just

2:37

a New York paper in eighteen eighty three when he started,

2:39

but under his tenure it became the first

2:42

national newspaper like the USA

2:44

today of its time.

2:46

Yeah, and he was, like I said, he was a tireless

2:48

worker.

2:49

But he also suffered from poor

2:51

health for most of his life.

2:54

I'm not sure exactly what it was, because

2:56

I saw that noises were a big deal. So he would

2:58

like have like rooms

3:01

that were just like vaults basically so

3:03

he could sit in silence. But

3:06

this poor health, and I think he had failing vision two.

3:08

He eventually, at the young age of forty three,

3:11

technically retired as editor in chief of

3:13

the World, but still really maintained

3:15

a pretty tight control over that paper.

3:17

Right. So today we

3:19

think of Joseph Pulleitzer, we

3:22

associate his name with distinguished

3:26

works of journalism, like the Cream

3:28

of the Crop of journalism every year,

3:31

and that it turns out as largely by

3:33

design, because Joseph Pulleitzer,

3:35

at the time he was alive and running the New York

3:37

World, was well

3:39

known for being the essentially

3:41

the guy who helped create yellow

3:44

journalism, using hyperbole,

3:47

using sensationalism,

3:49

like writing front page stories about people's

3:52

divorces, like just scandal

3:54

tabloid stuff like this guy helped establish

3:57

tabloid journalism in the United States,

4:00

And it might not have been quite so pronounced

4:04

his brand of yellow journalism had

4:06

he not had a

4:09

like a rival who actually,

4:11

in like perfect star Wars in fashion,

4:13

was actually his protege protege

4:16

turned rival, a guy named William Randolph.

4:18

Hurst, that's right, And they had

4:20

the New York American Journal. American

4:23

was the big paper for Hurst at

4:25

the time, and they were in a real sort

4:27

of neck and neck battle to

4:29

sell newspapers there in New York and

4:32

really kind of went at it yellow

4:34

journalism style.

4:36

Yeah, so yellow journalism, it turns out, has

4:38

to do. We must have talked about it in our comics

4:40

episode or whatever there was. The Yellow

4:43

Kid was a character on the comic

4:45

called Hogan's Alley and the

4:49

World and the Journal American

4:51

both had versions of this cartoon, essentially

4:54

one ripped off the other. So this was known

4:56

as the competition between the

4:58

Yellow Kids, which came

5:00

to be known as yellow journalism. Right, and

5:03

they would just pull out all the stops, And apparently

5:06

this race to the bottom is largely

5:08

blamed for starting the Spanish American War

5:11

essentially or at least getting America

5:14

behind the whole thing, so there was like real

5:16

repercussions to it. People's lives would

5:18

be ruined. And so the idea that Joseph

5:21

Pulitzer's name is associated with, like

5:24

the greatness of journalism is really

5:26

one of the better cases

5:29

of I guess whitewashing your image

5:31

over time.

5:32

Yeah, I mean, he did believe

5:34

in great journalism. He said at

5:37

one point, my idea is to recognize that journalism

5:39

is or ought to be one of the great and intellectual

5:42

professions. And

5:44

there's more to the quote, but like he was, he

5:47

had this idea that he revered

5:49

this journalism, maybe because he wasn't doing

5:51

it. And in eighteen ninety

5:53

two he approached Columbia University

5:55

president and said, hey, how about

5:57

we get a graduate school of journalism

5:59

going there isn't one in the whole world. They

6:02

said, eh, no, thanks, So Missouri,

6:05

the Missouri University of Missouri School of

6:07

Journalism became the first one in

6:10

nineteen oh eight. The Nobel

6:12

Prizes were launched in nineteen oh one, and

6:14

right after that, Joseph Pulleitzer said,

6:17

well, why don't we have our own awards for journalism.

6:20

This is nineteen oh two. Two

6:23

years later, in nineteen oh four, in

6:25

his will he said, hey, Columbia, here's

6:28

two hundred and fifty grand, which is about

6:30

nine million bucks today. Established

6:33

these prizes, and Columbia

6:35

had a new president at the time,

6:37

and they said this guy named Nicholas Butler.

6:39

He was like, yeah, that sounds great.

6:41

I'll take that money, and I'll also take

6:43

the two million dollars that you're going to give us for

6:45

that graduate school that we now think is a good

6:47

idea, which is about seventy one million

6:50

bucks today.

6:50

That's right, So very

6:54

wisely, Joseph Pullitzer, he

6:57

helped establish his legacy. He steered

7:00

what his name would be remembered for by creating

7:03

the foremost prize

7:05

for journalists. Right.

7:06

He didn't live to see it though, right.

7:08

Uh No, I believe I don't know what year

7:10

he died, but it was before nineteen

7:12

seventy nineteen seventeen.

7:14

Yeah, he died in nineteen eleven, Okay,

7:18

so he didn't even I think the graduate school

7:20

opened a year after that, and then the Pulletzers

7:22

didn't start until six years later.

7:24

Okay, So he probably died with his fingers

7:26

crossed, and it actually paid off because

7:31

not only did he

7:33

he did two really smart things. Chuck. One, he

7:35

created a panel a board

7:38

to oversee the Pulitzer Prizes,

7:40

and he very wisely said, you

7:43

it's up to you guys to let these prizes

7:45

evolve with the times. Don't let them just

7:47

be stuck in like nineteen oh

7:50

four type stuff, like, we want

7:52

them to just kind of grow and evolve, and they have over time.

7:54

That was very smart. And then secondly,

7:58

he tied them not just a journalist, but

8:00

to drama, to

8:02

music, to fiction, poetry.

8:06

And at the time, the

8:09

American arts were considered

8:11

foreig inferior to Europe, but

8:14

they were still considered vastly

8:16

superior to American journalism.

8:19

So by hitching the wagon of journalism to

8:21

this more revered and legitimate

8:24

form of expression, he

8:27

raised journalism as well the

8:29

profile of journalism, and it worked. I mean,

8:31

it was really sharp how

8:34

we set all this up, because it paid off in

8:36

aces.

8:37

Yeah, I think music came after him

8:39

because his initial eight awards were

8:42

four for journalism and then four book and

8:44

drama awards. Compared

8:46

to the twenty three categories

8:49

we have today fifteen in journalism,

8:52

five in books, one in drama, one in music,

8:54

and one for graduate fellowships in journalism.

8:57

And I say we

9:00

take an early break, yeah,

9:03

and go over these categories.

9:05

All right, let's do it.

9:18

Lately I've been learning some stuff

9:21

about insomnia or

9:23

alumnia. How

9:25

about the one on borderl

9:28

disorder that are under

9:31

order. You've heard that one be more,

9:33

but it was so nice

9:35

I learned this.

9:36

Why except everybody

9:39

listen up, stop

9:43

stop lead stop

9:46

stop stop.

9:52

So we're gonna go over all twenty three

9:54

categories. Dave helped us with this, So

9:56

we'll just tell you a little bit about him because there's

9:58

so many and maybe mentioned like some notable

10:01

winners or maybe this past year's winner.

10:03

This is going to be a four parter.

10:05

Yeah. One thing you will notice is

10:07

that.

10:09

He was a populist guy, Joseph

10:11

Pulitzer was very sort of progressive populist.

10:14

Even though he was a wealthy dude from a wealthy

10:16

family. He really wanted to

10:19

identify with a common person. And

10:21

the winners, as you'll

10:23

see, still have a very sort of populous

10:26

progressive bit to them.

10:28

Yes, very much so to this day.

10:30

And it's you know, through Columbia university.

10:32

Still, so it's not You're not gonna

10:34

see Alex Jones winning a Pulitzer Prize,

10:37

you.

10:37

Know, for

10:39

one of many reasons such a shock.

10:41

Wow.

10:41

Yeah.

10:42

So the first one, the big Daddy, as they

10:44

call it at Columbia, is

10:46

the Public Service Award. This

10:49

is the only Pulitzer award that

10:51

comes with an actual engraved medal. Right,

10:55

yeah, that's what they expect you to do

10:57

when they hand you the medals.

11:00

Dave who helped us with us he put it, it's like the MVP

11:02

of Pulitzers. Yeah, this

11:04

is so if you win this one,

11:07

usually it's for an entire organization.

11:10

Sometimes they'll they'll mention like the

11:12

lead writer, if it was basically

11:14

the work of one person. But usually it's like

11:16

the New York Times newsroom, or the Washington

11:19

Post newsroom, or yea once in a while, the Wall

11:21

Street Journal's newsroom. Usually one of

11:23

the big news services organizations

11:26

are the ones who win the Public Service Award.

11:28

That's right, that's the big Daddy. So there's

11:30

also the Breaking News Reporting Award.

11:33

Obviously, it's about breaking news and

11:36

it is for a story that quote as

11:38

quickly as possible, captures events accurately,

11:41

as they occur and as time passes,

11:43

eliminates, provides contexts, and expands

11:46

upon the initial coverage. One

11:49

notable winner was the Denver Post the

11:52

year the Columbine massacre happened, or

11:55

the New Orleans Times pick a UNI

11:57

for their coverage of Katrina in two thousands, that

12:00

kind of thing.

12:01

Yeah, journalism, what journalism

12:03

is supposed to be. They have a special award for that.

12:05

Yeah, newsy journalism.

12:07

There's also investigative reporting, which

12:10

you don't really need to spell

12:12

out because sure you know it is what it

12:14

is. But for this year, the Wall Street Journal one,

12:17

they had a series of articles,

12:19

and that's a recurring theme. Very

12:22

frequently the winners have

12:24

had a series of articles rather than just

12:26

one big whopper of an article. Yeah,

12:29

and that's actually by design, as we'll see.

12:31

But there was a series of articles about the conflicts

12:33

of interest between people

12:35

at fifty different federal agencies and

12:38

the stocks of the companies

12:40

that they regulated, and how they used

12:43

that information to basically trade

12:45

publicly. Like you remember our COVID episode

12:47

where we started shouting about how

12:50

some of the senators who were debriefed

12:52

on COVID and then went and sold stock should be locked

12:54

up. Yeah, it was about that basically.

12:57

Yeah, exactly.

12:58

What is for explanatory reporting if

13:02

it's like a really complex topic

13:04

that someone can break down in a in a great

13:06

way.

13:07

One for local reporting. So

13:11

yeah, that speaks for itself.

13:13

Yeah, and this is where it's

13:15

much easier for a smaller organization

13:18

to shop. Yeah, sure, that's good. Else

13:21

there's also national reporting, again

13:24

usually goes to the larger, the

13:26

larger organizations just because they cover

13:28

more of the nation. International reporting,

13:31

same thing. And then feature

13:33

writing, where you're

13:36

you're also kind of credited for

13:38

bringing in style, like

13:41

making a like taking a topic and actually

13:44

like making it more readable in

13:46

some ways. There's just some a certain flare to

13:48

it. It's like the TGI Fridays of Pulitzers.

13:51

Yeah, I thought.

13:52

I'd get a bigger reaction out, even you

13:56

jerk.

13:57

Commentary. That is for columnists, but it

13:59

is not editorial columns.

14:03

That's another one.

14:04

Criticism, like if you're a you

14:06

know, drama critic or a restaurant critic or

14:08

someone like that. Like Roger Ebert won one in

14:10

nineteen seventy five.

14:11

So did our old friend Michiko Kakutani,

14:15

who, as Dave helpfully pointed out as a

14:17

she for me because

14:19

I got it so so wrong before, so

14:22

so.

14:22

Wrong, which will we already corrected, Dave. Yeah,

14:25

what else?

14:26

We do have one for editorial writing. This

14:28

is for you know, either editorial boards

14:31

or op ed writers. Right, illustrated

14:34

reporting. This is a fun one because that's for

14:37

editorial cartoonists.

14:38

Yeah, that's what they used to call it, and then they changed

14:41

it to illustrated reporting and commentary.

14:43

And for this year, Mona Chellabi

14:46

won for The New York Times. She had a

14:48

series illustrating Jeff Bezos's

14:50

wealth and they were all pretty clever

14:52

and interesting, so were the finalists the runners

14:55

up too, but she had one that

14:58

showed so it compared the avera Ridge

15:00

Amazon employees wages

15:02

to Jeff Bezos's wealth,

15:05

and so that the average Amazon employee made

15:07

thirty seven, nine and thirty

15:10

dollars in twenty twenty and at that rate,

15:12

to reach Jeff Bezos's

15:15

wealth of one hundred and seventy two billion, they

15:17

would have had to have started working in the

15:19

Pliocene epoch four point

15:21

five million years ago. They

15:23

really drove it home to me.

15:25

Yeah, those are always fun, Yeah you can.

15:27

Yeah, I was going to say like, oh, was it just a

15:30

sack of money in the shape of the United States

15:32

or something.

15:33

No, it was much more telling that.

15:35

Yeah that's how you went a Pulitzer exactly.

15:38

But I mean the runners up too, were just

15:40

just just good stuff. Like go look up illustrated

15:43

reporting and commentary Pulitzer stuff and

15:46

you'll you'll be like, wow, this is amazing

15:48

that people do this.

15:49

We should we should do one on political

15:53

what are they called cartoons?

15:55

Yeah, editorial cartoons.

15:56

Yeah, yeah, we should do one on that whole thing. That'd be

15:58

a fun one, I think.

15:59

Okay, Yumy's uncle is an editorial cartoonist,

16:01

a well known one in Japan.

16:03

No way, way, wow,

16:06

all right, well, we're definitely gonna do it. Then, okay,

16:08

that's the old deal.

16:10

Cool.

16:10

I have seen that there's breaking

16:12

news photography, you

16:15

know, that's obviously some usually

16:18

some tragedy is unfolding and someone

16:20

will snap a iconic photo. Different

16:24

from the feature photography award. This

16:26

is like a photo series usually

16:29

yeah that has a tells a story.

16:32

That's feature photography.

16:33

It's more flip bookie than the breaking news

16:36

photography.

16:37

And then finally, everybody introduced

16:39

just a few years ago audio

16:41

reporting, Like there is a they

16:44

don't call it the Podcast Award, but that's

16:46

kind of what it is.

16:47

Well, it includes podcasts, but it can also

16:49

include like local yeah, public

16:52

radio, like features

16:54

and stories and all that. That's a huge expansion

16:59

because before it was all print, it was all writing,

17:01

as we'll see. So that's a big,

17:03

a big new one. And there's another new one coming down

17:05

the pike that allows broadcast

17:10

outlets like say, your local NBC

17:12

affiliate it's a really great

17:14

reporter that writes on their

17:17

website that reporter will now

17:19

be eligible for Pulitzer stuff.

17:22

That's cool.

17:22

Yeah. Then there's also the whole

17:24

book section, which is

17:28

interesting.

17:29

Yeah, the Prize for Fiction

17:32

used to be called the Prize for novels, but now it's

17:34

fiction. Usually it's

17:36

about American life, says

17:39

you know, preferably, but it's American

17:41

author generally with a story about

17:43

Americans American ing.

17:45

Yeah. So every year they picked that year's

17:47

Great American novel basically.

17:50

Yeah, and that's remember I said I was reading a book, a

17:52

novel for the first time in a while recently. Yeah,

17:55

I picked this book because

17:57

that's sometimes when I'm after a novel

17:59

and it's been in a while, I will go to the Pulitzer

18:01

list, and that's exactly what I did. And

18:03

I'm reading Less by Andrew Sean

18:06

Greer, which one in twenty eighteen,

18:08

and it is so funny

18:10

and great awesome.

18:12

I love it.

18:13

From in Living Color to Pulitzer

18:16

Price.

18:16

Oh, David Allen Greer com.

18:18

Oh oh that's right. There's also one on

18:20

history, a one on biography

18:23

also other way outs biography.

18:25

Your man, Charles Mann has not won the

18:27

Pulitzer. I looked it up. I was like, surely Josh's

18:29

guy won this award for history.

18:31

Yeah, no, that's more. He's

18:33

more focused on meso American. This is America,

18:36

like United States American.

18:38

I think that counts.

18:39

I agree, But apparently the Pulitzer

18:42

committee is not interested in that kind of

18:44

thing.

18:44

He won which was yours fourteen ninety one.

18:47

Yeah, and then the follow up was fourteen ninety three.

18:49

Yeah, he won a big award for that, but

18:52

not the Pulitzer.

18:52

Oh yeah, no, he definitely deserved it for sure.

18:55

Yeah. So you mentioned biography.

18:57

Yeah, there's also now memoir

18:59

or autobiography, sure.

19:01

Which was branded this past year.

19:03

Yeah, they're just really busting out the new awards.

19:06

Right, Yeah, they got a Poetry Award

19:09

for American Poets general nonfiction.

19:11

That would be what our book won a

19:14

Politzer.

19:14

For, right, so nonfiction but not

19:16

a memoir or autobiography or biography.

19:19

Yeah. And I'm not sure if we said this, and I'm not sure

19:21

if it was spelled out, but the

19:25

it had to have been released in that

19:27

year. Yeah, yeah, okay,

19:29

so the good point. Okay, that's that's very important.

19:32

So like our book will never win a Pulitzer because

19:34

it had a shot at winning the

19:36

year it came out, and then after that it's out of the

19:38

running.

19:39

That's right.

19:40

Same uh, same with drama. There's a drama

19:43

one that we said, like usually it is a

19:45

great American play. David Mammott

19:47

won for Glengarry Glenn Ross.

19:49

Yeah, what's

19:52

the name one,

19:55

oh David.

19:58

Well Miranda, Yes, that guy, Yeah

20:00

yeah.

20:01

August Wilson won for Fences,

20:03

another great play. So yeah, great great

20:05

plays.

20:06

And then music, and this one's

20:08

typically kind of controversial because it really

20:10

reveals just how stuffy the

20:13

Pulitzer board is. In any

20:15

given year. It almost

20:18

always goes to a like

20:20

a recording of classical music that somebody

20:23

released that year, and

20:26

classical music is not exactly America's

20:28

contribution. These are American awards. Don't

20:30

forget about America by Americans.

20:32

Typically well,

20:35

America contributed jazz, rock

20:37

for the most part, and hip hop very

20:40

clearly as far as music goes,

20:42

and only one hip hop artist. I'm surprised that

20:44

there's even one. Kendrick Lamar won

20:46

a Pulletzer in twenty seventeen.

20:49

A couple of jazz cats have, but

20:52

for the most part, it's usually classical music.

20:54

So look for that to continue

20:56

to change in the future because from what I

20:58

can tell, the Pulletzer people are

21:01

hyper aware of how they are

21:03

perceived in the in the intelligentsia

21:07

version of pop culture and respond

21:10

to it subtly over time.

21:12

Yeah, what I want to know is how many of

21:14

our friends in Britain their

21:17

heads about to pop off.

21:18

That's why I said kind of I qualified

21:21

the invented rock and roll. We had a lot to do

21:23

with it.

21:24

Hey, of course we did.

21:25

Chuck Berry was in British.

21:26

No, I know, we trust

21:29

me.

21:29

I'm with you, okay, And some can even

21:31

say that the you know, the American Blues is the

21:34

true birth of what would become rock and roll because

21:37

all those British bands were influenced by the

21:39

American blues exactly.

21:40

Yeah to stick it.

21:42

Yeah, take that our British friends.

21:45

You know what's interesting though, is the

21:47

biggest sort of rock bands of the classic

21:50

rock era, most of those

21:52

were not American. I mean

21:54

that we had our share,

21:57

but like when you think about you

21:59

know, the biggest bands in the

22:01

world, they were led Zeppelin and

22:03

the Who, and the Rolling

22:05

Stones and the Beatles and mostly

22:07

British.

22:08

So super super duper classic

22:10

version, not like White Lion or Dockin

22:13

No, no, no, because they were Americans

22:15

through and through.

22:16

My friend Yeah, yeah, I mean we had Boston

22:18

and the Eagles and Aerosmiths and stuff like that.

22:20

Sure, but they have flatbirds.

22:23

Yeah.

22:23

No.

22:24

Boys, See, you're

22:26

taking a rite down the White Lion lane.

22:30

All right? Should we keep going or should

22:32

we take a break here?

22:33

Uh, let's keep going since we already took it early one.

22:36

Okay. If you guys thought it was a slog before

22:38

buckle up.

22:40

That's right, because we're going to talk about how they

22:42

choose these and the first step.

22:45

And I think the main reason we didn't win

22:47

a Pulitzer Prize is that we

22:49

didn't submit our book.

22:50

You gotta submit.

22:51

They just don't say, all right, every book

22:53

that's written this year will look at you.

22:55

You got to. You gotta pay your seventy five bucks and

22:57

submit it.

22:58

Yeah, we didn't have seventy five bucks.

23:00

We did.

23:01

We thought about it. We couldn't couldn't

23:03

get the company to back us or.

23:05

Pay us to stand off. You and I had to standoff

23:07

of it was like, well, I know you got it. You're

23:09

not gonna pay it.

23:09

I'm it.

23:10

I noticed Jerry didn't step forward.

23:13

Yeah, that's Jerry needs to bust out the wallet

23:16

one.

23:17

There are a couple of like our book would have qualified

23:19

and every other way it had to have been

23:21

published in a hard copy definitely

23:23

was That separates a lot

23:26

of the self published ebooks, which

23:28

apparently are not up for Pulitzer

23:31

consideration. Unless you self

23:33

publish a book in hard

23:35

copy. As long as this in hard copy somewhere,

23:38

it's eligible to be considered for a

23:40

Pulitzer, and you, the author, like you said,

23:42

can suggest it, can nominate it yourself.

23:45

That's right.

23:46

If you're entering in journalism, it

23:48

has to be in a news outlet that publishes

23:51

regularly, so it can't

23:53

be the zine you put out,

23:55

you know when you feel like it. Right, that

23:58

can be online only versions.

24:02

It doesn't have to be in pay per form, but

24:04

it has to be like a legit, you

24:07

know, qualifying website.

24:08

Yes, for sure. And then now,

24:11

like I was saying, broadcast media outlets,

24:13

their writers can can be eligible

24:16

for stuff posted on their websites, But

24:18

there's nothing for documentaries. There's nothing

24:20

for video only journalism. I predict

24:23

this changing in the next within this decade.

24:26

Yeah, they'll be just one for

24:28

like content creator, their

24:31

influencer. Dave

24:33

makes a point here to watch out for when

24:36

something claims to be bullets are nominated, because

24:39

if you have submitted, then you're technically

24:41

nominated. It doesn't mean that you're

24:44

special because anyone can

24:46

can nominate. If if you've got seventy five bucks, you

24:49

can and you qualify, you can put yourself

24:51

in there. I say that they should require

24:53

people just say bullets are submitted.

24:56

Right, we can't even claim that.

24:58

Yeah, but if

25:01

you don't win. The only other sort

25:03

of distinctive honor is

25:06

if you're one of the three finalists and

25:08

you can claim to be a finalist.

25:10

Yes, yeah, that's yeah.

25:12

If you're a policer finalist, Like, you can

25:14

still toot that horn for sure and people will listen.

25:17

Yeah, you're like three out of I think

25:19

they are eleven hundred journalism entries

25:21

per year on average.

25:23

Wow, and about fourteen hundred books.

25:26

Yes, so yeah, now we reach step

25:29

two. Like your work has been nominated,

25:31

it gets shuffled together with a

25:34

lot of other stuff and about

25:36

one hundred different jurors, sometimes

25:38

repeat jurors from the year before. You don't have to

25:40

just do it once. And it's not the same

25:42

people every year for sure. But they're all volunteer

25:45

jurors. They get assigned to twenty two different

25:47

categories. And yes we said there's twenty

25:49

three. But the photographers

25:51

who are the jurors judge

25:54

both breaking news and feature photography,

25:57

and they are people

25:59

who are some time former Pulitzer winners.

26:02

There are people who are like really well

26:04

known in their field. I think

26:06

like Roxane Gay was one of the

26:08

jurors on this past year's

26:12

poetry Poetry

26:15

Committee. I think so,

26:17

Like you're you're probably pretty good

26:19

at your job if you're on a Pulitzer jury.

26:23

Josh, I have one question, though, what

26:25

are any of those jurors.

26:28

Jurors for

26:30

the local reporting ones.

26:31

Yes, okay, Giral jurors, Yep,

26:34

that's great.

26:35

You usually serve a few years and

26:37

then they'll rotate you out.

26:39

It is.

26:40

You don't get paid for it's a volunteer thing, but

26:42

you got If you're on the book side,

26:45

you were reading a lot of books.

26:48

Yeah, apparently for

26:50

the fiction category, there might be three

26:53

hundred books that you have to read through within

26:55

several months.

26:56

Now.

26:58

I tried and tried to find out if that was because

27:00

what I saw was there are six book

27:02

juries with five jurors

27:05

per jury, so

27:07

thirty different judges, and

27:10

they send them in thirty book packages. But

27:12

I didn't know, are they really it's

27:14

impossible to read three hundred books over

27:16

the course of months, not if.

27:18

You're Pulitzer jury

27:21

material, My friend.

27:23

Is that the deal?

27:24

Because I was trying to verify that, I thought maybe

27:26

they read thirty each and just

27:28

it was all like packaged together or

27:30

something.

27:31

I didn't see

27:33

anywhere that contradicted that. And yes,

27:35

three hundred books is a lot

27:38

to read. As a matter of fact, now that

27:40

that we're talking about it, that is a preposterous

27:43

number for one person to read within

27:45

several months.

27:47

I mean, how many books is that a week? Two

27:49

weeks?

27:50

One hundred? I think if

27:52

my math is correct.

27:53

That's almost six books a week. Is that possible?

27:56

No, it's not, because these people also

27:58

have like regular jobs that their whole holding down too.

28:01

Yeah.

28:01

So I really looked and looked

28:04

and looked, and I could not find. What

28:06

I'm guessing is is that they get thirty books

28:09

per judge.

28:12

Which is still quite a bit. But yes, that's much more

28:14

manageable than three hundred.

28:16

I hope somebody knows, because I really want to get to the bottom

28:18

of this. There's no way there they're reading three hundred books.

28:20

I wonder.

28:21

I wonder if each judge so this would make

28:23

a lot of sense. And again, like we've

28:25

never advertised

28:27

ourselves as experts, and I think we're

28:30

showing it big time now. But if

28:32

I were guessing, chuck each

28:34

if each one reads thirty books,

28:36

they pick like their favorites and

28:39

present them to the committee and say, these

28:41

are some of my favorites. And everybody does that,

28:43

and it immediately whittles it down to a manageable

28:46

size. That would make a lot of sense. And then maybe

28:48

the other ones have to read the books

28:50

that the other people brought forth.

28:53

Yeah, rat, I

28:55

mean that makes sense. I was just destraughed at how hard

28:57

it was to find this out. I

29:00

looked and looked and looked, and I couldn't find out for sure

29:02

if they each read each book.

29:04

So that's an ongoing thing too. From what I've

29:06

seen that the deliberation process

29:08

is very secretive. The Pulitzer

29:11

Committee and board and anyone associated

29:14

with it has no obligation

29:16

whatsoever to be transparent about the

29:19

judging process at all.

29:21

Yeah.

29:22

Yeah, that is a criticism. But ultimately

29:25

what happens is they will meet

29:27

in person in February at Columbia,

29:30

sometimes in March, and they reduce it to the

29:32

three finalists, and then the board picks

29:35

the ultimate winner from each of the picks

29:37

of three. Well

29:39

that's not true. They

29:42

are generally picked from

29:44

that group of three, but they are not required

29:46

to pick from that group of three. And there

29:48

have been many cases

29:51

leap twelve times in fiction at least,

29:53

where they did not award a winner at all.

29:56

Yeah. Anytime the board decides

29:58

not to pick somebody, it's a huge

30:01

it's considered a huge slap in the face.

30:04

As recently as twenty twenty one. So

30:06

twenty twelve for fiction, twenty twenty

30:08

one, for the Editorial Cartoon prize,

30:12

the board opted not to choose from the

30:14

three finalists Lalo Alcaraz,

30:18

Marty two Boles Senior, and Ruben Bowling

30:21

from Tom the Dancing Bug. They were the three

30:23

finalists and none of them won.

30:25

And so with he did someone win? No,

30:28

they look like there was no award to gotcha.

30:31

No award? And I saw

30:33

Ruben Bowling was basically like, so, yeah,

30:36

they're saying no one

30:39

made Pulitzer worthy material this

30:41

year, and that's that's like, that's crazy.

30:44

And but I liked Marty two Ball's interpretation.

30:46

He said that to him, they

30:49

had so much trouble picking a winner that nobody

30:51

won. They all spoiled when another's chance, because

30:54

there has to be there can be a hung

30:56

jury. You have to get some percentage

30:59

of the votes to make

31:01

it as the as the winner and

31:03

not just a finalist.

31:05

Well that's what happened in twenty twelve for sure, because

31:07

they actually came out and said for

31:10

fiction.

31:10

That it was a three way tie.

31:13

That's rare. With the editorial

31:15

cartoon in twenty twenty one, they just stayed, Mom, They

31:17

just said, no awards going to be awarded.

31:19

Yeah, but like, how do you have a tie,

31:22

Like you could either have an odd number on

31:24

the board or let

31:27

that president because the president of Columbia

31:29

is always on the board. Still they

31:31

should be the tie breaker or something.

31:32

That is a huge criticism that that's

31:34

even possible that you couldn't do

31:36

that not have a winner because they deadlock.

31:40

All right, thumbs down Bulleitzer for that decision

31:42

for me to get with the times.

31:44

So you hit on something

31:46

earlier. You thought I was saying,

31:49

the board can select

31:51

somebody that wasn't even nominated by

31:54

the jury.

31:54

Right, yeah, yeah, if it's not someone

31:56

outside that final three.

31:58

Yeah, they apparently just

32:00

need a three quarters vote

32:03

to either select somebody that

32:05

wasn't nominated, that

32:07

was in that category or was in

32:10

another category, and they moved them to

32:12

a category they think they are

32:14

likeli or to win. That happened

32:17

with the biography of George Floyd this

32:19

past year. It was nominated

32:21

in biography. Apparently

32:24

this biography and Jaeger Hoover with such

32:26

gangbusters that it was no way even George

32:28

Floyd's biography was going to win. They

32:30

moved it to the general nonfiction

32:33

category, and George Floyd's

32:36

biography won in that one. So it's

32:38

like you said, the Pulitzer committee is very

32:41

conscious of the messages they're sending

32:43

out by their awards, for sure, and sometimes

32:46

they maneuver to speak loud and

32:48

clear.

32:49

All right, I say we take our second break, and

32:51

we'll finish up with talking about some of the controversies

32:54

and some of the surprises over the years.

33:10

Lately I've been learning some stuff

33:13

about insomnia or

33:15

aluminia. How

33:18

about the one on border

33:20

like disorder, better under

33:23

order?

33:24

Heard that one before, but it

33:26

was so nice I learned

33:28

it.

33:28

Wise, everybody,

33:31

listen up, stop

33:35

shut off, stop

33:38

stop stop.

33:44

So uh. One of the things

33:46

that the Pulitzers are definitely criticized

33:49

for is the

33:51

frequency, Yeah, the frequency

33:54

of ords that go to the same news organizations

33:56

over and over and over again, because

33:59

the Pulitzers were award extensive

34:03

in depth reporting that you

34:05

really kind of have to have a pretty decent

34:07

budget to carry out. And

34:10

so The New York Times has won one hundred

34:12

and thirty two Pulitzers over the years. The

34:14

Washington Post has seventy plus, The

34:16

Associated Press has fifty eight so

34:19

like the big news organizations are the ones who

34:21

usually take home the most, but they

34:23

have it set up in a way that, like

34:26

the local news reporting is much

34:28

likelier to go to a smaller

34:31

organization than the

34:33

bigger guys. But that big

34:35

one, the big daddy, as we said, the

34:38

Public Service Award almost always

34:40

goes to or very

34:42

often goes to, one of the large news organizations.

34:45

But that's not always the case, Chuck, it's

34:47

not always the case.

34:50

That's right.

34:51

In twenty seventeen for editorial

34:54

writing the Storm Lake Times

34:56

one, this is a speaking

34:59

a rural juror. They probably went

35:01

wild over this because this is a paper that runs twice

35:03

a week with a staff of nine people,

35:06

with a circulation of about three thousand

35:09

in rural Iowa. And

35:11

it beat the big daddies, that beat the New York

35:13

Times in the Wall Street Journal, among others.

35:15

Yeah. In nineteen ninety,

35:17

a few years earlier, the Washington

35:20

Daily News out of Washington, North Carolina.

35:22

They won because they had a series of articles

35:25

that exposed that the city council was

35:28

well aware that the drinking water was tainted

35:30

with carcinogens and that they were covering

35:32

it up. And they won

35:34

a pulletzer. They had a circulation of eighty

35:37

six hundred and forty four. So,

35:40

in addition to these really good reporting

35:43

that it would require for a small

35:45

organization to win the

35:47

public service pullets or the big one,

35:50

it's worth pointing out these people

35:53

are under the most pressure to

35:56

not publish stories like that. Yeah,

35:59

their friends, neighbors and grocery

36:01

store shoppers, with the mayor,

36:04

with the city manager, with

36:06

the Chamber of Commerce head like the people

36:08

who are who can pressure them and

36:10

say like, you're you're ruining the image

36:12

of our town. Don't don't write about this or

36:15

change the tone of it. So in that sense,

36:17

those people deserve a pulletzer

36:19

even more than say, you know, a huge

36:21

organization that can that can just

36:24

kind of deflect that kind of stuff is under tremendous

36:26

pressure. There's a difference getting a

36:28

call from the president saying I don't want you to run

36:30

this and getting a call from the mayor saying

36:32

you don't want to run this, But it's still

36:34

it seems different. I feel like the pressure is even greater

36:37

for smaller news organizations.

36:39

So as far as controversies go, there

36:42

are a few kind of famous incidents

36:45

that not incidences. By the way,

36:47

I've been saying that wrong, have you. An

36:49

incidents doesn't mean something that

36:52

happened, it's an incident.

36:54

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

36:56

Somebody pointing that out to me.

36:57

Yeah, Okay, believe it or not.

36:59

Someone wrote in and point out out something that we said

37:01

that was bothered them.

37:02

That's a first.

37:04

Anyway, we should talk about

37:06

these incidents.

37:09

The first one was from nineteen eighty one.

37:11

A woman named Janet Cook at the

37:13

time was writing for the Washington Post

37:16

and was the first black woman to get

37:18

a Politzer Prize and feature writing well

37:21

I think journalism period. And

37:24

this was a story about called Jimmy's

37:26

World, about an eight year old heroin addict named

37:29

Jimmy and Washington, d C.

37:31

It had such an effect that at the time

37:33

Marion Barry was mayor. Marion

37:36

Barry was mayor of DC forever. He

37:40

ordered his administration to find this kid

37:42

and get him away from his parents. It

37:45

was a huge It just dropped a bomb on

37:47

not just Washington, d C. But the whole country.

37:50

And Janet Cook made the whole

37:52

thing up.

37:53

Yeah.

37:54

So it was submitted by who

37:56

at the time was the assistant managing editor

37:58

of the post, a guy named Bob Woodward,

38:01

none other than and he

38:03

submitted this thing. She had

38:05

previously, for three years

38:08

worked for the Toledo Blade, which

38:10

was her hometown newspaper and Josh's

38:12

sometown newspaper. And they

38:15

were like, wait a minute, she worked here,

38:17

and we're looking at her bio

38:20

from the Pulitzer Committee, and like,

38:22

this doesn't match up with the bio that she gave

38:24

us. It says she speaks all these

38:26

languages. She doesn't speak

38:29

all these languages. She didn't

38:31

graduate magna cum laude from Vassar, she

38:34

didn't have a master's degree from University

38:36

of Toledo. And so they start kind

38:38

of like her old employer started grilling

38:41

her publicly about this, and

38:43

she initially said, like, all

38:45

right, I fudged my resume some and

38:48

literally within hours it all

38:50

fell apart. She eventually

38:53

copped to making up this whole story. This

38:55

is as Marion Barry and the

38:57

DC cops are coming up empty

39:00

looking for this non existent kid, and

39:02

Marion Barry's casting public doubt. But was

39:05

in a you know, kind of a pickle of a situation.

39:09

Yeah, like it seems like there's no Jimmy,

39:12

but like we're not sure what's going on.

39:16

I think the sad thing is that apparently

39:18

it's sort of like the A Million

39:21

Little Pieces book. Yeah, that

39:23

guy wrote like I read that book and

39:25

it was great with a capital G. And

39:28

in my mind I was always like, dude, why did you

39:30

just should have called it a novel and you

39:32

would have been fine. And apparently the writing

39:35

in Jimmy's world was so great, like

39:37

really famous authors came out and we're

39:39

like, I just wish she hadn't have done this

39:41

all. You know, she should have won the Nobel Prize

39:44

for Literature.

39:45

That was so good.

39:46

But she put herself out there for

39:48

a pulletzer and that was that was the fatal flaw.

39:51

Yeah, So it took days before

39:53

she finally fested up and and

39:55

and retracted the story and said

39:57

that she was returning her pulletzer, which

40:00

from what I could tell, she didn't have to do. She could have

40:02

been like, thanks for the pulletzer jumps, I

40:05

don't I guess they could rescind it, but she

40:07

didn't have to give it back. So she did and

40:10

moved to France and just stayed in

40:12

communicado for a decade or two and

40:15

then Teresa Carpenter, who wrote the

40:17

story Death of a Playmate about the

40:19

murder of Dorothy Stratton in

40:22

The Village Voice, ended up winning the

40:24

nineteen eighty one Pulletzer for feature

40:26

writing. She was, I guess the runner

40:28

up, and after Janet Cook gave

40:30

it back, Teresa Carpenter got it and that was a really

40:32

good story. It was definitely pullets are worthy.

40:35

Yeah.

40:36

Alex Haley was another one in nineteen seventy

40:38

seven for his book Roots,

40:40

which I never knew it had a colon,

40:42

but I didn't either. The full title

40:44

of Roots was Roots Colon the Saga

40:46

of an American Family. I think I've seen

40:48

it before on the cover, but it they didn't call

40:51

it mini series that so.

40:52

Plus the colon was implied.

40:54

Yeah, exactly.

40:56

It was a novel, but Haley claimed that it

40:58

was based on his family from his own

41:00

African heritage that he had researched, and

41:03

it turned out that that probably wasn't true. It was unverified,

41:07

and he admitted to plagiarizing parts of

41:09

Roots from other novels. At

41:11

the time, they did

41:13

not rescind his Bulletser

41:15

though it was a special citation.

41:18

It wasn't the Book Prize, So I think they just

41:20

let it slide.

41:21

Yeah, there's a real campaign to get

41:23

that special citation, even rescinded

41:26

by some people. But yeah, I had no idea

41:28

that Roots was fabricated in

41:30

some ways or plagiarized

41:32

to And then there's a

41:34

guy named Walter Duranty who

41:37

inspired so much. I

41:40

guess dislike is a nice

41:42

way to put it among journalists

41:44

that he was awarded the Poltzer back in nineteen

41:47

thirty two. People still today

41:49

are calling for that to be rescinded. And

41:51

then the war in Ukraine kind of flared

41:53

it back up again after kind

41:55

of dying off a little. He was the

41:57

Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times, a

42:00

Pulitzer, like I said in thirty two, for

42:03

his reporting on Joseph Stalin and Stalin's

42:06

dictatorship, and essentially

42:08

he was the guy who was presenting

42:11

Stalin in a really great light to

42:13

America. He was a huge apologist

42:15

for Stalin. And it's gross because

42:17

in his Pulitzer award it says

42:20

that he was awarded for his dispassionate

42:23

reporting. It was not just passionate at

42:25

all. It was in favor of Stalin and

42:27

Stalin's policies that killed millions of people.

42:30

Yeah, and one of his direct quotes was

42:33

to pretty brutally, you can't make an omelet without

42:35

breaking eggs. But when

42:37

talking about the death of Ukrainians.

42:39

Right, so he still has his Pulitzer.

42:42

People are still mad about it.

42:44

Yeah, we did mention the you

42:46

know, the sort of secrecy of

42:49

how it goes out is always

42:51

controversial. And it's like

42:53

any award, any subjective award, whereas

42:55

he whether it's Academy Awards or Emmy's

42:58

or whatever, they're all subjective.

43:01

So there's always going to be people

43:04

complaining that it's not

43:06

rigged. But just like

43:08

you got to be a certain kind of thing to

43:10

win this award. Just like an Oscar

43:12

bait movie that they throw out at the end

43:15

of the year, there are Pulitzer I

43:17

don't know about bait, but you know,

43:19

when these publications are putting together

43:22

these series, they're like, hey, you do

43:24

a good job here, and you know what might be at the end of that

43:26

road.

43:26

Right, there's a really great

43:28

you can characterize it as a takedown

43:30

very easily by Jack Schaeffer in Politico

43:33

called the Pulitzer Prize scam from

43:35

a few years back, and Jack Schaeffer

43:37

basically is like, how could

43:40

you possibly compare some of this stuff

43:42

and find any distinguishable difference

43:45

enough that says this one's better than this

43:47

one? And an example I

43:49

came up with is the editorial writing Pulitzer

43:51

for twenty twenty three. It went

43:54

to a writer for a series

43:56

on the broken promises of the city

43:58

of Miami to citizens. Right,

44:01

the runners up were one that explained

44:04

the U'voldi tragedy and

44:06

the botched police response, and

44:08

then the other runner up was about how

44:11

domestic white supremacist terrorism

44:14

affects the United States. How

44:16

could you compare those three things and be like, Yep,

44:18

this one's better. I mean, because

44:20

the writing in and of itself is going to just be top

44:23

notch to begin with. So then

44:25

what you're using the material to judge

44:28

it? Bi, well, how do you compare that material to other

44:30

material? It is fully

44:32

subjective, and that drives some people nuts.

44:35

Yeah, I mean, I think with any award like that,

44:37

the voter, whether

44:39

it's a board member of the Pulitzer or an Academy

44:42

member, is voting on something that speaks

44:44

to them the most, I guess.

44:46

Right, And like you said, I mean it is

44:48

if you look at some of the material,

44:50

a lot of the material, it is very

44:53

liberal in it's bent, and

44:56

it shines a light on the

45:00

kind of the kind of issues

45:02

that liberals would be interested and upset

45:05

about. And that seems to

45:07

be generally what the Pulitzer

45:10

committees tend to the juries

45:12

tend to percolate towards the top.

45:15

Yeah, I mean it's clubbe university, it's academia.

45:18

They have that bent anyway, generally that

45:21

I mean that joke I made about Alex Jones earlier.

45:23

I want to be clear.

45:24

They're not giving him and they're not denying

45:26

him the award because he's a

45:29

conservative. You

45:31

know, they're denying him the award because he's a lying

45:33

liar, right, you know there's

45:36

a difference for sure.

45:37

I'm not even sure he qualifies as conservative

45:39

at this point.

45:40

Yeah, who knows?

45:42

You got anything else on Pulitzer prizes?

45:45

No?

45:45

I mean, should we put

45:47

in for podcast or not?

45:49

Oh? I don't. I don't know, man.

45:51

I mean I feel like in order for us to put

45:53

in, we would have to do a special, like

45:55

four part series on something. It couldn't just be for

45:58

well, it certainly couldn't be for all excellence.

46:01

No, definitely, for a lot of reason. Definitely

46:04

not. But yeah, we could do We'll do a four part

46:06

series on jelly

46:09

beans.

46:10

Yeah, or maybe we should just submit to the episode

46:12

for the word like.

46:14

Yeah, that's a great idea. Okay,

46:18

Okay, we're gonna do that. In

46:20

the meantime, if you want to know more about the politzerprise, go

46:22

Rey Jack Shaffer's takedown. It's a good place to start because

46:25

he also gives a lot of background too. And

46:28

since I said background, it's time for listener mail.

46:33

This one is from

46:36

a teacher. We love these, Hey guys, I'm

46:38

a chemistry professor at the College

46:40

of Worcester in Ohio.

46:43

And he says Wester

46:45

not Wooster.

46:46

But that's another story.

46:48

One of the joys in my work is chatting with college students

46:50

in the lab while we wait for experiments to complete,

46:53

talking about life, current events, random facts.

46:55

There have been some uncanny similarities between

46:57

our conversations and your recent are

47:00

you guys listening in Luckily

47:02

most of my recent experience. In

47:05

my most recent experience, you realized the

47:07

podcast before the conversation.

47:10

I was never taught much African history,

47:12

and thanks to you walked away from your Highly

47:14

Selassie podcast feeling well in formed. I

47:17

shared what I learned with one of my students from Ethiopia,

47:19

and during the conversation they shared an interesting

47:21

fact of their own. Apparently there

47:24

is a bump engineered on purpose

47:27

in the road at the spot where highly

47:31

Selassie's former residence is. So

47:33

when motorists pass by, they hit

47:35

the bump and their head bobs,

47:38

and it is so every head will bow when

47:40

they.

47:41

Drive by his house.

47:41

Pretty amazing.

47:42

And I try to find this out and verified it. I

47:45

didn't spend a whole lot of time looking because you

47:47

know, fact checking listener mail is

47:50

something I want to put a lot of time into. But

47:53

hey, if this is true, that's pretty pretty

47:55

awesome.

47:56

Yeah, and even if it's not true, I'm going

47:58

to go do the same thing in front of my house.

48:01

Yeah.

48:04

Bags of cementas Yeah,

48:07

I expense them too.

48:08

Awesome. That is from Paul Bonbalay.

48:12

Thanks a lot, Paul, that's a great email.

48:14

Thank you very much, and yes, we are watching you in

48:16

your class. Keep up the good work. If

48:18

you want to be like Paul and get in touch with us, we

48:21

love hearing additional facts that may

48:24

be so amazing that they possibly

48:26

aren't true, but are still a good idea. If

48:28

you want to do that, you can send it in an email

48:30

to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot

48:33

com.

48:36

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48:39

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48:43

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