Tonight let’s talk about Pulitzer Prizes for 2023.
Here’s a gift link to the NYT Pulitzer Prize list.
Who won, who deserved to win, who was robbed? Is this a political process in any way, or does that not play into the Pulitzers?
Who would you have nominated?
Sometimes we have folks on Balloon Juice who are connected to some of the winners at the Oscars or Emmy Awards; maybe we’ll have some connections with Pulitzer Prize winners? Hey, it’s Balloon Juice, you never know!
Update: If this topic isn’t grabbing you, it can be a wide-open culture thread.
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Mike in NC
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was ROBBED!!
#1
Gwangung
I don’t know Sanaz Toossi, the Prize winner for Drama. But I do know one if the finalists fir this year (Lloyd Suh) and last year (Kristina Wong). Does that count?
lollipopguild
@Mike in NC: Santos is the gift(grift) that keeps on giving.
karen marie
I hesitate to say that these are tales told by idiots but an awful lot of the awards are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Looks like a lot of participation trophies.
NotMax
Don’t know about the Pulitzer but can not difficult to discern who would again be a shoo-in for the P.U.litzer.
//
Wyatt Salamanca
I have no issue with this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, but these snubs from the past piss me off whenever I think of this award:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Afraid_of_Virginia_Woolf%3F
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/history-is-hard-to-decode-on-50-years-of-thomas-pynchons-gravitys-rainbow/
Also, Ralph Ellison should have won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for Invisible Man and William Gaddis should have won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for both The Recognitions and JR.
karen marie
@Mike in NC: If by “robbed,” you mean “Embezzled Contributions from Supporters, Fraudulently Obtained Unemployment Benefits, and Lied in Disclosures to the House of Representatives,” sure.
NotMax
#5:
but can not = but not
Dorothy A. Winsor
Demon Copperhead was one of my favorite reads this year, so I’m pleased by that one.
Gwangung
@Gwangung: Although I guess that I’m at the stage of my life where if any of my friends don’t get a Pulitzer i can say they were robbed
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC: I thought he wrote… everything that was nominated. ?
WaterGirl
@Gwangung: Absolutely!
Scout211
It’s fine. He’s won at least five over the last few years. Didn’t you know? /s
The only news reporting I recognize is the Mississippi Today story by Anna Wolfe. She did a great job so I think she deserved it. She uncovered quite a scandal.
I haven’t read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver but my sister raves about that book and it’s now on the list for 2024 for my book group. I’m looking forward to it.
Gwangung
@WaterGirl: Lloyd Shu’s THE FAR COUNTRY is a historical piece on Chinese American immigration to this country ;something I’m surprised and pleased that someone can say new things about). TFNYT wrote about it here:
Kristina is an on the edge performance artist, with a heart as big as the world)which sometimes breaks when the world can’t live up to her generousity). She made a piece about running for elected office; her finalist piece )KRISTINA WONG SWEATSHOP OVERLORD) was how she organized hundreds of women around the world to make clothe masks for first responders and the Navajo nation when masks wre badly needed)
Heidi Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Same here!
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Did anything come of it after she did the reporting? I don’t follow football. but isn’t Brett Favre the religious one?
WWJD?
WaterGirl
I added an update up top.
i thought there would be more interest in the Pulitzers than there seems to be, so If this topic isn’t grabbing you, it can be a wide-open culture thread.
Tom Levenson
David George Haskell was a second time finalist in the non-fiction category. He’s absolutely great, and I wish he’d won with either title (I was on the non-fiction jury that selected his The Forest Unseen as one of three finalists in 2012.) Haven’t read this year’s non-fiction winner, so I have no idea if he was robbed—but he’s one of the best nature/science literary writers working these days and is well worth your time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Heidi Mom: I still think about it.
zhena gogolia
No Pulitzer for Betty Cracker?
i’ve met Tyshawn Sorey, finalist for music. Otherwise no familiarity with any of this work.
Betty Cracker
I know someone who won a Pulitzer this year — a friend who works at a Florida newspaper. She is the second person I know who has a Pulitzer; the first is a childhood friend who was recognized several years ago, also for journalism at a Florida daily (two different papers).
karen marie
@WaterGirl: I didn’t look at the authors on the reports I saw at the time the story broke, so I don’t know if they were by this prize winner, but I found it really annoying – and unhelpful – that all the focus was on Favre instead of the government officials who actually stole the money.
The current governor was lieutenant governor at the time this particular episode of filching happened. Odd that his name never came up in that reporting.
Nukular Biskits
A couple of callouts here from a MS local:
MS Today and MS Free Press.
I follow both on Twitter.
Both of these outlets are committing actual acts of journalism, something the supposedly “liberal” mainstream outlets in the state either can’t or won’t.
Scout211
Here’s an update. Link
Highlights:
gwangung
@Betty Cracker: Wow. That’s cool. And for journalism, where I think it’s harder to predict what’s Prize worthy and what isn’t.
WaterGirl
@Scout211:
“If you’re a star, they let you do it.”
edit: Trump apparently did tell the truth, that one time.
oldgold
Ever since I was a primary player in litigation that a writer won a Pulitzer for covering, where the facts of the case were badly bungled and the legal analysis was dreadful, my respect for Pulitzer Prizes has diminished greatly.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: That’s very exciting! She must be over the moon.
I really don’t know much about the Pulitzers. I presume you can’t nominate yourself? So it must be incredible to find that you have been nominated.
jackmac
The Chicago Sun-Times was nominated for — and denied — a Pulitzer Prize for its ambitious and sprawling 1978 series chronicling the city’s chronic corruption, favors and kickbacks after it and the Better Government Association purchased a bar north of the Loop and named it The Mirage. Reporters posed as bartenders and waitstaff and photographers perched in a hidden area above the bar to gather images of city inspectors and others seeking payoffs to overlook various health and code violations.
The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee objected to the Sun-Times methods, calling them deceptive and unethical. So, no Pulitzer.
The 25-part series led to a series of city, state and federal investigations and a reforms.
WaterGirl
@jackmac: I guess the Pulitzers can be very political, then.
oldgold
@WaterGirl: Precisely so.
Sure Lurkalot
My father met Pulitzer at Jefferson Barracks near La Havre, France as a liberated POW.
”I was in a tent or hut…I was so excited I don’t recall which, when a tall, black haired man in a brown suit poked his head in the doorway and asked if there was anyone there from St. Louis….the man merely said he was ‘from the Post-Dispatch’.
We talked about prison camps, the war and our experiences after he had introduced himself as Pulitzer. It didn’t dawn on me at first and I thought he was a reporter. Finally, the name penetrated my alleged brain and I said, ‘Pulitzer? Why, you are the owner of the darned paper, aren’t you?’ He smiled and acknowledged he was and went on talking. Afterward, we couldn’t get over the publisher being way over there himself.”
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Editors put together packages to nominate their paper’s coverage. From what I gather, it’s an intense and arduous experience! I remember my friend agonizing over choices of what to present.
prostratedragon
And in 1984, following a few years of talent drain, Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times and held it just long enough to wreck it before becoming a U.S. citizen and buying WFLD tv Chicago. Let me stop before I begin shrieking.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sure Lurkalot: Wow. Great story
HinTN
@Tom Levenson: Yes, he is truly an outstanding talent, as a scientist and a writer.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Oh, interesting! That makes total sense.
tokyokie
Because I worked at newspapers for 30 years, I’ve known a few Pulitzer winners over time. But I can’t say whether any of my friends were robbed this go-round; all of them have been laid off over the last several years.
oldgold
@Betty Cracker:
I do not’ know about other categories, but for editorial writing you have to submit 10 samples.
jackmac
@WaterGirl: Yes indeed.
PaulWartenberg
I’m not a Pulitzer winner but I have a few books published. And this Saturday May 20th I will be part of Bartow FL’s Writers Block Party and Street Fair in downtown Bartow from 10AM to 6PM selling my anthologies. I hope to see a few Floridians there, please and thank you.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084803377504
Brachiator
I think that this was a well-deserved award. In addition to the racial issues, there was a political power grab involving city council members.
The sad thing is that the LA Times and other newspapers are dying even as good journalism becomes more vital.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Shades of the McCurtain Gazette.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Sure Lurkalot: ?? Joesph Pulitzer died in 1911
Jill
Amen to the Demon Copperfield comment. I love books that teach me and move me. I learned a lot about the OxyContin (now add fentanyl) epidemic and Demon found himself a place in my heart.