Is this further evidence of the demise of newspaper journalism? It seems that the committee members charged with awarding the Pulitzer Prize could not agree on a feature story worthy of receiving the coveted prize. So this year, they chose not to give one away. Read Roy Peter Clark’s article about why this happened. He is a senior analyst at the Poynter Institute. From reading various takes on the episode, the reasons behind the inaction range from simple bad writing, to a political war among committee members set on their choices who were unwilling to budge and decide on a winner. At the Poynter Web site you can read the three finalists, which is just what Clark and his colleagues did. According to Clark, the articles simply didn’t have the juice to go the distance: they couldn’t decide on a clear winner either. The stories, while serious and weighty, were “way too long and difficult to read, devoid of memorable characters, and surprisingly weak in the use of language, indecisive about narrative structure.” You decide.
