Pulitzer Bait

This post reminded me of a terrific piece Sarah Lyall (one of the NYT’s under-appreciated stars) wrote for Slate a couple of years ago. She made the mistake of attending the British Press Awards dinner. The Pulitzers these are not. Most papers crow about their own successes while failing to even report the existence of winners from other titles. Happily, however, there are enough award ceremonies for almost everyone to claim the title “Newspaper of the Year”. In their own way, the hacks treat these awards with the proper level of contempt and, since no-one spends all year dreaming of ways to win them we are at least spared the epic, 17-part thumb-sucking series on “Life” or “Death” or “Being a Deaf Quadraplegic” the American papers publish in a bid to win Pulitzers…

More than 900 journalists, all in black-tie, were crammed into a ballroom at the Hilton; they represented everything from the scrappiest, most sex-obsessed tabloid to the snootiest, worthiest broadsheet.