Prized?
: Dan Gillmor urges us to look at the Pulitzer winners and ask whether bloggers could produce such work. “Reporting and editing of this caliber is why I hope Big Journalism survives and, despite its failings, thrives in the emerging world of grassroots journalism.” Fair point.
Dave Winer asks why these journalists couldn’t have blogs themselves to use them in their reporting. Fair point.
I come at this from an other perspective and ask why the Pulitzers matter. Too many news organizations edit their work with a prize jury in mind instead of their readers. I’ve said before that if I ran a paper or a TV news show, I wouldn’t enter anything into contests, for the contest that matters is serving our readers and viewers.
That’s why I’m glad that this blog world hasn’t gone prize mad. Oh, we have various popularity contests and that’s fine. And I think it’s good to recognize quality where we see it (I was a judge of The Week’s opinion awards and was glad, mainly, for the attention and respect they gave to blogs).
But I see bloggers lusting after links and traffic more than prizes and that is how it should be.
