Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
On Not Winning the Pulitzer
By Joan McCarter, 4-08-08
 |
|
 | |
|
It’s not that the Idaho Statesman didn’t do a public service by investigating the private life of Sen. Larry Craig, sending the paper’s key political columnist on a wild goose chase for several months last year, through Washington D.C.’s gay bars, armed with a mug shot of the Senator.
And it had to have been a bitter blow to that columnist, Dan Popkey, to have his months of solid work spiked by his editors and then to be scooped by a D.C. insider paper when the Senator, of all things, decided to secretly plead guilty after getting caught in a sex sting in a men’s room in a Minneapolis airport. So, while I do respect Dan Popkey for the yeoman’s work he did in that investigation, and I’m glad that his work did finally see the light of day, I’m just a little bit relieved for all of us that the Statesman was just a runner up this year for that vaunted prize. If for nothing else than for the 144 year-old Statesman itself.
James Reynolds printed the first edition of the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman on July 26, 1864, in a log hut. He campaigned vigorously for the war against slavery.
Today, with the daily newspaper, the Treasure Valley’s most-read media Web site and a growing number of niche publications, the Statesman reaches more than 276,000 Valley adults each week.
Those 276,000 Treasure Valley residents most definitely deserve to know what the people they elected are up to, the good and the bad, the sublime and the sordid. But the Pulitzer? Consider the history of the Pulitzer and recent winners in the category the Statesman was considered for, Breaking News. In 2002, the staff of the Wall Street Journal won for “its comprehensive and insightful coverage, executed under the most difficult circumstances, of the terrorist attacks on New York City, which recounted the day’s events and their implications for the future.” In 2004, the LA Times got the nod for “compelling and comprehensive coverage of the massive wildfires that imperiled a populated region of southern California.” In 2006, it was the New Orleans Times-Picayune, for “courageous and aggressive coverage of Hurricane Katrina, overcoming desperate conditions facing the city and the newspaper.”
Of course, there was 2005 and the matter of a former New Jersey governor resigning after his own gay sex scandal. (Was 2005 really such a slow news year?) So it’s not as though the Pulitzers were in uncharted waters on this one. But, still, kudos to the committee for the decision to award the prize to the Washington Post for its Virginia Tech shootings coverage, when it could have gone for the Craig story. Or the David Vitter story. Or the Bob Allen story.
Let’s just say 2007 was an interesting year for the more pruriently-inclined news junkie. Will 2008 match it? We’ve got a good start with Elliot Spitzer. Republicans have got to be really glad that for once it’s not one of them caught up in a sex scandal. Of course, they’ve got plenty of the other kind of scandal--money--to worry about, what with the book cooking and embezzlement in the National Republican Campaign Committee, and then there’s Alaska, where apparently the last frontier to explore is corruption.
Scandal and politics go hand in hand, and more than one journalistic career has been made on the transgressions of the people we choose to govern. But, for posterity’s sake, for Pulitzer’s sake, I’m glad that history wasn’t made this time, with this story. So congratulations to the Statesman, Popkey, and the other reporters for being runners-up. They’ve shown they’ve got Pulitzer potential in them. Here’s hoping there’s a story waiting out there that will get it for them. And hopefully it won’t be about sex.
Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Be the first to comment on this article. Please complete the form below.