The Power of the Prize: How an Emerging Prize Culture HelpedShape Journalistic Practice and Professionalism, 1917-1960

Gerry Lanosgaglanosga@indiana.edu

Abstract

This historical analysis considers the role the Pulitzer Prizes played in shaping modern journalistic practices by helping determine standards of quality for newspapers. Using entry and jury materials from the first four decades of the prizes, this study reveals a prize culture built around elite figures whose selections sent clear signals about the kinds of journalism it deemed exceptional, and newspapers that responded in turn, strategically planning their coverage and nominations. In this way, the prize establishment wielded extraordinary power in the development of journalistic professionalism in the twentieth century.

Key words: Pulitzer Prize, newspapers, professionalization, journalism history

Biographical note: Gerry Lanosga is an assistant professor in Indiana University’s Media School. His research interests revolvearound both historical and contemporary journalistic practice.

Word count: 7,766 (beginning next page)

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IntroductionA key project of media scholarship is the continuing effort

to identify the forces that exert influence on journalistic practices and production. That is, how does the journalism we arefamiliar with come to be? In his research on agenda setting, McCombs likened the influences on the news media agenda to the layers of an onion, with sources in the outermost layer, other media in a second layer, and a collection of “practices, values and traditions into which every journalist is socialized” at the center of things (McCombs, 1992: 817)

A little-examined element of journalistic socialization involves the seeking and awarding of professional prizes. Though there has been much use of prize-winning journalism as a benchmark of journalistic quality, scant attention has been paid to examining the prize process as an influence on professional journalistic practice. Beam, Dunwoody and Kosicky noted the dearth of research into the functions of prizes but speculated they might help maintain social control in newsrooms: ‘[J]ournalists probably come to know quickly whether prizes are valued and what caliber of work it takes to win them’ (Beam et

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al, 1988: 698). Forde examined the Pulitzer Prize board’s instrumental role in the ‘recognition, naming, and definition of the form’ of explanatory journalism (Forde, 2007: 227). She described the research as one way to answer James Carey’s oft-cited appeal for a ‘history of the idea of a report’ (Carey, 1974: 3-5, 27). But her analysis also suggested potential for a systematic view of prize-giving itself as a powerful institutional force in journalism history. Earlier, Nord issued aplea for such scholarship, calling for more ‘attention to the historical institutions of mass media, especially journalism,’ observing that it is in institutional structures ‘that historicalpower lies’ (Nord, 1988: 8-9).

This study responds to that call by tracing the emergence ofa distinct prize culture around journalism’s first professional awards, the Pulitzer Prizes, and how that prize culture exerted power in the professional project of defining what constitutes good journalism.

The Pulitzer Entry MaterialsThis study originated in a larger project focused on the

prevalence of investigative reporting between the muckraking era and the 1960s (Lanosga, 2010). The bulk of the evidence is drawn from the rarely-studied Pulitzer Prize administration records, starting with the inaugural awards in 1917 and ending with the 1960 awards. The records include complete indexes of prize entries beginning in 1936 and jury reports that contain at least partial lists of entries dating to 1917.1 Although the official Pulitzer collection housed at Columbia University’s library has been well-plumbed over the years, it consists largely of winning exhibits only, while the administrative records include information on all entrants. Some of the records were used for a recent book focusing exclusively on the Public Service prize (Harris, 2007). For a broader picture, this study drew on material reflecting all of the reporting categories, which

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include nearly 4,500 contest entries over the time span. The materials include detailed descriptions as well as reports of thejuries that screened entries. This paper relies particularly heavily on the jury reports, which often include supporting documents such as nominating letters from newspapers.

A close historical reading of these records reveals an official prize establishment that served a socializing function for newspapers and individual journalists during these four decades, encouraging practices that shaped the development of professional journalism. Journalists were socialized not just to content but also technique, and not incidentally, how to win prizes. Recognition through prizes – particularly the Pulitzer Prizes, which represent professional affirmation of the highest order – is certainly not the only influence over journalistic behavior, but it is a significant one that adds context to our current understanding of how that behavior developed in the twentieth century.

The prize culture fostered by the Pulitzers was built aroundelite figures in the field whose judgments came to define standards of quality in American journalism. The Pulitzer board and its screening juries sent clear signals about the kinds of journalism they deemed exceptional, and journalists, in turn, planned their work strategically. Prizes weren’t simply bestowed;rather, journalists won awards through a deliberate process of prize‐seeking. Evidence from jury reports indicates journalists were keenly self‐conscious about prizes, researching the process and strategizing how best to get their stories recognized. Such maneuvering points to the underlying reality that prize‐giving involved the conferral of status, and thus the exercise of power based on the value of the coveted prizes. Through this mechanism,lessons learned by journalists about appropriate professional conduct were reinforced at the highest levels of journalistic authority as reflected in the makeup of the prize establishment.

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The Peculiarity of PrizesIt is important at the outset to acknowledge the

implications of the fact that prize materials do not constitute arepresentative sample of journalistic content, just as journalismas a whole does not make up a representative sample of reality. Writing of the heavy influence of government sources on journalists, Leon V. Sigal noted that news is ‘less a sampling ofwhat is happening in the world than a selection of what officialsthink – or want the press to report – is happening’ (Sigal, 1973:188). In the same way, prize-winning stories are a non-representative sample of work deemed merit-worthy by prize judges, chosen from a somewhat larger (and also not representative) sample of entries perceived by news organizationsto have the qualities that the judges seek. The practice of submitting work calculated to please judges whose decisions will be scrutinized by later aspiring prize winners neatly encapsulates the circular nature of the socialization process.

This peculiarity of prize entries underscores a critical point about the exceptional nature of the work under examination here. That is, prize winning stories and to a large extent prize entries represent the field of journalism as it aspires to be, not necessarily as it is or was on a broad scale. Stated another way, the prize culture fostered by the Pulitzers and later competitions reflects what the field deems to be its best journalism, not its most typical. Although early juries expressedhope that they would see a representation of American newspaper journalism as a whole, prize entries instead reflect an idealizedpicture. The entries, in that sense, are outliers in the context of everyday news work.

Such acknowledgement allows us to reconcile the Pulitzer Prizes’ lofty goals with the realities of daily journalism and, indeed, with the reality of Joseph Pulitzer’s own conflicting career as a newspaper journalist. Pulitzer cut his journalistic teeth in St. Louis, leading the Post Dispatch in its crusading

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exposés of the 1880s and 1890s, which helped lay a foundation forthe muckraking movement (Hofstadter, 1953). On the other hand, his New York World was better known for scandal-mongering and sensationalism, earning Pulitzer the honor of being regarded as one of the progenitors of yellow journalism.

When he formulated his idea for the prizes, Pulitzer’s stated wish was that they would recognize journalistic excellenceand contribute to the public good. He once responded to critics this way: “More crime, immorality and rascality is prevented by the fear of exposure in the newspapers than by all the laws, morals and statutes ever devised” (Daly, 2012: 128).

The prizes, then, can be viewed partly as an effort by Pulitzer to reclaim journalism and his place in it – an answer tocritics and perhaps a public that was disenchanted with yellow journalism. In a broader sense, they were also part of an emerging professional paradigm for journalism. Journalists in this era weren’t writing only for the public; they were writing for an imagined community of journalistic elites intent on delineating the ideal parameters of the professional practice.

The Move Toward ProfessionalizationThat process began in 1917, the first year the Pulitzer

Prizes were awarded. The Pulitzers were in the vanguard of what James English calls an ‘unrelenting proliferation of prizes’ in the twentieth century (English, 2005; 17). The first prizes were given for work published in 1916, but the idea had been around since 1902, when Pulitzer announced his plan for them in responseto the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was started the year before (English, 2005: 28-29). Pulitzer set aside two million dollars to endow the prizes as well as a new journalism school atColumbia University to administer them (Pulitzer, 1903).

The prizes were deeply enmeshed within a broader process of journalistic professionalization that had begun in the late nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth, journalism was

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well on its way to becoming ‘a distinct occupation with its own patterns of behavior,’ according to sociologist Michael Schudson.‘By the 1920s, journalists were articulating the rules of the journalistic road’ (Schudson, 2003: 82). This move toward professionalization included the establishment of trade associations such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1922, the adoption of journalistic codes of ethics, thefounding of journalism schools such as Columbia and the creation of trade magazines such as Quill, which began publishing in 1912. The Pulitzers came along in the middle of these developments and have maintained a preeminent status among awards, partly because they were the first national journalism contest, not joined by another national competition until the creation of the Sigma Delta Chi awards in 1935 and broadcasting’s Peabody awards in 1941.

The Pulitzers were set up to be judged in a two-stage process involving screening juries in each category and the Advisory Board of the Columbia School of Journalism. After 1950, the board was renamed the Advisory Board on the Pulitzer Prizes; here, it will be referred to as the ‘Pulitzer board’ or simply ‘the board.’ Early juries consisted entirely of Columbia faculty and administrative board members, but the panels were later expanded to include rotating crews of editors and publishers, with ASNE helping provide jurors (Hohenberg, 1974). It was not unusual for ASNE’s president and the president of the Newspaper Publishers Association to get the call to serve. Further cementing the professional grounding of the prize system, some ofthe adjunct faculty members serving on juries were themselves working journalists. And jurors frequently were drawn from the ranks of previous prize winners. Lee Hills, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, served as a juror in 1958, two years after winning the reporting award; that year, editors from eight other winning newspapers were also members of the prize juries.

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The Pulitzer board, meanwhile, was made up entirely of newspaper executives. After reading the entries in a given year, the prize juries came up with short lists of entries to pass on to the board, which reviewed the recommendations and selected thewinners. Consequently, the prizes from the start were an expression of the views of journalism elites about what constituted good journalism.

The board’s practice was to keep deliberative materials confidential, but cues about the decision-making process were notdifficult to come by. The awards were routinely written up, for instance, in both trade journals and general circulation magazines such as Time.2 Quill, the magazine of the professional fraternity Sigma Delta Chi, began routinely listing major national journalism awards by 1955.

In addition, the influential journalists serving on the board and juries almost certainly helped disseminate knowledge about the rationale of the prize process throughout the journalistic ranks. As long-time prize administrator John Hohenberg noted, ‘[T]he balance of jury membership was heavily infavor of the working press’ (Hohenberg, 1974: 172). Thus, prize standards were developed and then diffused into the journalistic field both through publicity about the awards and through influentials who served leadership roles both within and outside the prize establishment.

A ‘Paucity’ of Prize-Worthy MaterialAs with any new program, the Pulitzer Prizes needed time to

establish a name for themselves. Joseph Pulitzer’s wish may have been that the awards would enshrine journalistic excellence, but that standing didn’t come automatically. Jury notes indicate the School of Journalism at Columbia was well aware of the need to dosome reputation-building – or, if you will, socializing of journalists about the prize and its claim to represent journalistic excellence. In 1920, for instance, J.W. Cunliffe,

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director of the school, wrote to inform Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler of the winners. In the letter, he also noted the need for more entries:

In view of the paucity of material submitted for competition for some of the prizes, the teaching staff respectfully suggests that each fall the attention of the principal newspapers be called to the conditions onwhich the prizes are awarded. (10 May 1920)

Early Pulitzer juries, in fact, often expressed frustration with both the quantity and quality of entries.3 The 1925 public service jury felt that most of the submissions did not measure up, according to Cunliffe’s report to Butler: ‘Mr. Frank E. Gannett, of Rochester, is of the opinion that all the matter submitted is so ordinary that he favors not awarding the prize this year’ (13 March 1925). The reporting jury’s report that yearnoted there were only 46 submissions:

We are unable to believe that this number is more than an infinitesimal part of the worthy achievements duringthe year… and we are convinced that in the years to come it may be possible to have this annual roundup become a true cross-section of the work that American newspapers do. (7 March 1924)4

The number of reporting entries was little changed in 1927 –which saw 37 entries – and in 1928, the reporting jury again wrote to ‘regret the paucity of the entries for the prize’ (15 March 1928). In a separate letter to Butler, jury chairman W.P. Beazell said he couldn’t recommend a winner, complaining that the18 entries were the smallest number ever:

In no sense of the word can this be regarded as an adequate representation of the character of the work being done on the newspapers of the United States. The articles as a whole were of a low standard; lower even than in previous years when your juries were constrained to remark upon this. (12 March 1928)

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Beazell said the status of the Pulitzer Prizes should not be tainted by an award to an article that is simply ‘the best of a poor lot.’ The board evidently agreed, declining to give an awardfor reporting in 1928. Thus, while the act of awarding a prize can have a socializing effect on journalists looking to win subsequent prizes, the decision not to hand out an award in a given year might also provide subtle socialization – or at least Beazell and some others associated with the administration of theprize hoped it might. For instance, the 1944 reporting jury, represented by Roscoe B. Ellard and Robert E. MacAlarney, wrote to inform Butler that the entries that year were ‘uniformly disappointing’ and suggested that the ‘quality of future reportorial submissions might be improved if an award were passedthis year’ (27 March 1944).

The Prize as a Form of CapitalIn spite of the early struggles, it is a given that

journalists wanted to win the prizes. No training was needed to understand the cash nexus – the prize for reporting initially carried a $1,000 award, and the public service prize was a gold medal worth $500. In today’s dollars, those figures would be roughly $18,000 and $9,000. 5 The hefty dollar figures speak to the prize as a form of capital, although cash is not the most important aspect of a prize’s value. Rather, as English has written, the prize is an instrument of cultural hierarchy. Winners enjoy greater professional respect and mobility, among other things. Roland Kenneth Towery, for instance, won a Pulitzerin 1954 while editor of a tiny newspaper in Cuero, Texas. As a result, he was offered a ‘much better salary’ to go to work for the Austin American-Statesman, his wife recalled in an oral history interview (Texas Newspaper Oral History, undated).

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As the Pulitzers grew in prestige, then, the number of journalists entering the prize competition also grew. The recordsare sketchy before 1936, but from that year forward there is a clear upward trend, from 88 entries in 1936 to 315 in 1960 (this includes only the reporting categories and the public service prize). Entry indexes tell the tale of newspapers submitting numerous entries across categories. This ‘prize seeking’ – and what it suggests about journalistic integrity – has been a point of criticism of journalists in more recent decades. Writing aboutthe contemporary prize environment, Alicia C. Shepard describes a‘prize frenzy’ in American journalism, noting that many top news organizations have full-time contest coordinators devoting “massive amounts of time and energy” during the busiest months ofcontest season (Shepard, 2000).

But overt prize-consciousness and strategizing is not a new phenomenon. Though prize entries generally were nominated by newspaper editors, there is reference as early as 1955 to nominations coming from newspaper promotion managers. That year, according to the administrative records, Virginia W. Wilton, promotion manager of the Camden, New Jersey, Courier-Post, nominated three series of articles for consideration for the public service prize.

Another practice that developed early on is that of enteringstories in multiple categories. In 1928, the Indianapolis Times won the public service medal for its Klan investigation; the Times also nominated Frank J. Prince to win the reporting award for hiswork on the story. The practice would become entrenched, an indication of the calculating manner in which prizes were sought.By the 1950s, this doubling-up (sometimes tripling-up) was widespread, though frowned upon by prize juries. Public service jurors Raymond J. Fanning and Walter Lister complained about it to prize administrator Hohenberg in 1956. In their letter, they suggested changing the rules to prevent cross-filing of entries: ‘It seems to us that newspapers submitting entries ought to be

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able to make up their minds as to a specific category in which they want their exhibit considered, and stop ‘playing the field.’(16 March 1956)

The national news screening jury in 1951 also recommended a category change, this time to prevent suspected scheming by syndicated columnists to win in the national reporting category. The jury wrote:

Because many of them have staffs, it places them in unfair competition with one-paper writers. We sense a move by their syndicates to try for a Pulitzer award for business reasons. Advertising unfair to columnists of equal ability would follow an award. (20 March 1951)

In his study of cultural prizes, English wrote that prizes ‘continue to serve as the most bankable, fungible assets in the cultural economy’ (English, 2005: 22). That journalists of the past were fully attuned to the value of winning a Pulitzer is evident from exchanges like the ones above. It is evident, as well, that journalists made deliberate choices in the types of stories to submit, often choosing to send in-depth series that showcased reportorial enterprise rather than one-shot daily stories written on deadline. That was a concern for some reporting jury members who took seriously the stated requirement that entries in the category should consist of deadline reporting.

The 1942 jury reports include a letter to Butler from Herbert Brucker and Richard L. Tobin noting a ‘tendency among reporters and editors to submit series of articles which were written with special care, but which were not prepared “under pressure of edition time” ’ (1942). The 1947 reporting jury made a similar complaint, claiming ninety percent of the entries were not deadline stories: ‘Entries were series, written after carefulinvestigation, no doubt, but not under time pressure. Or, they were feature stories.’ As a remedy, the jury suggested new categories for series and features to help maintain the purity of

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the reporting award: ‘We believe the spot news reporter is the backbone of the paper’ (12 March 1947).

‘In the finest tradition of great Pulitzer Prize winners…’There is little doubt that journalists noted the kinds of

work being recognized by the Board and went about the business ofprize seeking in a strategic manner. Journalists sending entry materials frequently made overt references to past board decisions. For instance, in 1953, the New York World-Telegram and Sun nominated reporter Edward J. Mowery for the local reporting prizefor stories that resulted in the exoneration of a wrongfully imprisoned man. The nominating letter from editor B.O. McAnney pointedly invoked past prize decisions: ‘Mowery’s effort… is an extraordinary example of local reporting and journalistic initiative in the finest tradition of great Pulitzer Prize winners in previous years’ (27 January 1953). Mowery won the local reporting prize that year, reaffirming the board’s fine traditions. Choices like that made plain to news organizations what kind of work Pulitzer judges valued, providing cues for later journalists.

In the same way, the Pulitzer establishment provided clear (if unwritten) guidance on approaches and techniques considered award-worthy. Almost from the start, the Pulitzer juries and board gave recognition to investigative and enterprise stories, especially those that achieved results. New York Evening Post reporter Harold Littledale won the 1918 reporting prize for exposing abuses in New Jersey prisons and prompting reforms of the system. In 1921, the public service prize went to the Boston Post for William H. McMasters’ exposure of the original Ponzi scheme ‘at a time when the public officials were inactive,’ notedCunliffe in his letter to Butler (8 April 1921). And in 1922 and 1924, the New York World won public service prizes for investigations of the Ku Klux Klan and peonage in Florida.

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This premium on investigative stories naturally yielded moreentries of the same variety, such that the exposé came to constitute a steady proportion of submissions each year, hundredsof entries over the time period studied here (Lanosga, 2010). Andthe emphasis on results was not coincidence but rather a deliberate approach, as made clear both by the rules of the prizeand the jury notes. In defining the reporting prize at the beginning, Joseph Pulitzer had emphasized factors that included ‘the accomplishment of some public good commanding public attention and respect’ (Pulitzer, 1904). That language was included in the annual ‘Plan of Award’ generated by Columbia University. The emphasis on accomplishment appears to have been dropped in 1953 when the reporting award was split into two categories (edition time and no edition time), but the juries continued to emphasize results.

The 1953 jury on local reporting recommended five entries to the Pulitzer board, noting, ‘Tangible results of a story, or remedial steps taken following disclosure of a condition also figured largely in the choices’ (1953). One of two jurors in the category that year was Hartford (Conn.) Times managing editor Carl E. Lindstrom, who offered personal observations on some rejects in the category. He applauded the Greensboro (N.C.) News for its storieson the Ku Klux Klan, but questioned whether any reform resulted and whether the story was difficult to get because some of the Klansmen portrayed apparently didn’t object to the ‘disclosure’ (undated, quotation marks in original).

Lindstrom expressed skepticism about claims of results achieved by other newspapers as well, including a series on border control problems by the San Diego Union and a series on highways by the San Francisco Examiner. Of the latter, he wrote: ‘Theonly remedial action cited is that oil companies have “agreed to major parts of the program”; legislation has been SUBMITTED and the nominating letter says merely that there is “every indicationthat the problem will be solved” ’ (undated, emphasis in

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original). Such comments point to a degree of contest puffery inherent in entry materials as well as the fact that juries were keeping an eye out for it.

While some juries focused on results, others emphasized factors such as reportorial effort. That was the concern of the 1921 public service jury as it weighed a choice between the Boston Post’s investigation of Charles Ponzi’s financial swindle andthe New York Evening Post’s exposé of problems in government rehabilitation programs for World War I veterans. While the jury thought either series could qualify for an award, the decision came down to which story required more digging, Cunliffe wrote toButler: ‘[T]he work of the ‘New York Evening Post’ (sic) consisted mainly in gathering and verifying the mass of soldiers’ complaints that were lying ready on every hand’ (8 April 1921). The award went to the Boston Post.6

If journalists failed to notice the signals coming from the prize establishment on their own, often the trade press helped interpret or amplify the message. In 1955, for instance, Quill editor Carl R. Kesler noted in his introduction to the magazine’sannual awards issue that a substantial share of the year’s prizes(Pulitzer and otherwise) had been made for investigative reporting: ‘It reveals that American journalists are unstinting in time and energy to run down wrongdoers and protect the unjustly accused. Above all, they are striving to make governmentserve the people’ (Kesler, 1955).

The Pulitzer Board Sends a MessageDecisions of the Pulitzer board could also have effects on

the changing emphasis on subjects of prize entries over time. Critical coverage of the Ku Klux Klan beginning with The New York World in the 1920s offers an example of a cycle in which initial recognition by the board for one or two newspapers was followed by a surge in similar coverage and entries by other newspapers.

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The twenties were marked by ethnic conflict in American cities that provided a conducive atmosphere for the growth of theKlan. While the organization couldn’t establish a foothold in some of the larger, more diverse cities – such as New York and Chicago – it became a worrisome presence in others like Indianapolis and Denver (Teaford, 1986: 56,61). The World was the first major paper to turn its attention to the Klan, publishing an exhaustive exposé of the organization’s history, operations and nationwide reach in 1921. The series, written by reporter Rowland Thomas and edited by Herbert Bayard Swope (winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for reporting), was filled with revelations about the Klan’s fundraising and ties to public officials. The World estimated the Klan’s nationwide membership at more than half a million. In one article, the newspaper catalogued the record of Klan violence and threats in Texas alone over the previous year: ‘Four killings, one mutilation, one branding with acid, forty-one floggings, twenty-seven tar-and-feather parties, five kidnappings, forty-three persons warned to leave town or otherwise threatened, fourteen communities threatened by warning posters, sixteen parades by masked men with warning placards’ (15September 1921).7

The World’s reporting received widespread attention. It was syndicated in 18 other newspapers and in 1922 won the Pulitzer Prize for public service (Harris, 2007: 134). The following year,the Pulitzer board again recognized an exposé of the Klan with the public service award, this time by the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Other newspapers would follow and enter their own Klan investigations for Pulitzer consideration during the course of the decade – the Denver Express in 1925; the Colorado Evening Telegraph and the Columbus, Georgia, Enquirer Sun (another public service winner) in 1926; the Vincennes, Indiana, Commercial in 1927; and the Indianapolis Times, winner of the public service medal in 1928.

In his history of the competition, Pulitzer administrator Hohenberg suggested the early prizes ‘stimulated the

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investigative function of the press in reporting on the threat tocivil liberties that the Klan represented. Numerous other awards flowed from those first gold medals for attacks on the Klan’ (Hohenberg, 1974: 40). Likewise, Walter Brasch, in his history ofmuckraking, argued the Pulitzer board was sending a formal message to newspapers that it would recognize crusades against racism.

The media were not expected to lead the campaign to eliminate segregation and racial and religious intolerance. But, the editors and reporters who did usetheir newspaper as vehicles to try to get their communities to accept all people as equals, found support in the Pulitzer board (Brasch, 1990: 162).

The ability of the prizes to influence subsequent reporting practices is apparent in the increase in entries devoted to othersubjects as well. Two prominent issues of the late 1940s and 1950s were organized crime and social problems in America’s growing cities. Organized crime had barely registered as a subject of prize submissions, but from 1949 until 1960, there were thirty-five such entries. The marked increase coincided withnational concern about organized crime, but it was also clearly correlated with professional recognition via the Pulitzer Prizes.In 1948, Malcolm Johnson of the New York Sun reported and wrote a 24-part series exposing organized crime along the New York City waterfront. The series would later serve as the basis for the Hollywood movie ‘On the Waterfront,’ but first it captured the Pulitzer public service prize, helping touch off a wave of similar organized crime reports in the following years. In 1949, newspapers nominated six organized crime reports, followed by four in 1950 and six more in 1951. That year, the Pulitzer Board again conferred its imprimatur of approval, taking the rare step of awarding two public service medals, one to the Brooklyn Eagle and one to the Miami Herald for their separate investigations of crime syndicates. Organized crime would remain a frequent topic

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of newspaper prize nominations during the remainder of the decade.

In the same time frame, the reporting of social problems became a mainstay of newspaper prize submissions. Social concernshad been on the agenda of newspapers and the prize establishment from virtually the beginning of the prizes. Since 1918, when the reporting prize recognized Harold Littledale’s exposé of abominable prison conditions, stories about health, safety and welfare issues were represented in a small but steady number of entries received by the Pulitzer office. But attention to those topics began increasing in the early 1940s. Investigations about public health and welfare topics such as slum housing and workplace safety, for example, surged after the Baltimore Sun won aPulitzer for a 1946 series on problems with the administration ofunemployment compensation and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch won for its 1947 investigation of unsafe conditions in coal mines. Entries devoted to such topics doubled in 1948 and 1949.

Concern with organized crime and social issues, of course, grew out of larger societal changes, but the decisions of the Pulitzer board provided additional incentive for journalists to investigate them. It is not argued here that the prize apparatus was solely responsible for the development of professional practices such as investigative reporting. Rather, prizes played an important role in a constellation of influences over journalistic practice and output.

Criticism of the Prize ProcessThe question then arises whether the influence of prizes is

primarily positive or negative. Over the years, a large degree ofcriticism has been levied at the prize process, with various writers suggesting the Pulitzer Prizes are deeply marred by bias,conflict of interest, and a somewhat unsteady eye for quality journalism. In 1948 the Minneapolis Tribune’s editorial editor, Carroll Binder, told Time magazine, ‘Possession of a Pulitzer

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Prize does not guarantee that the holder is among the best. Nor is the lack of a Pulitzer Prize evidence that a veteran newspaperman is not among the most capable or fearless’ (Time, 1948). It was a telling comment coming from Binder, who himself served as a Pulitzer juror in the international telegraphic reporting category the previous year!

English has noted the paradox in conflicting views of prizesas exemplars of quality on one hand and a corrupting influence onthe other. He writes of the sense of the cultural prize as a ‘debased coin’ competing with the ‘sustained willingness, even anintensified obligation… to accept the medals and trophies as a legitimate measure – perhaps the only legitimate measure – of a person’s cultural worth’ (English, 2005: 22).

Both journalists and scholars have bought into this equationof prizes with quality.8 But that notion is complicated by charges of a distorted process. Criticism of the prizes generallyrevolves around two complaints: the unseemliness of journalistic prize seeking itself and the allegedly faulty judging that characterizes the program. 9 Evidence of prize-seeking is quite clear in the Pulitzer entry materials and lends credence to criticism that newspapers spend too much time developing showcasepieces at the expense of other important news coverage. As for the judging process, empirical studies tend to support the contention that Pulitzer board decisions have favored large urbannewspapers.10

Los Angeles Times critic David Shaw inventoried a laundry list of complaints in his 1984 account of the Pulitzer process: domination by establishment newspapers, distortion by conflicts of interest, neglect of small papers and those in the West, the makeup of the board. Considering Pulitzer board minutes and jury reports from 1947 forward, Shaw concluded bias was more of an issue before 1960 than in more recent decades, with prizes routinely going to newspapers represented on the Pulitzer board (Shaw, 1984: 184).

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As numerous authors have noted, news luminaries such as AP’sKent Cooper, the Baltimore Sun’s Frank Kent and the New York Times’ Arthur Krock were able to hold longtime seats on the board. Cooper served from 1931 to 1956, during which time AP won 14 times and UPI not once. UPI, in fact, boycotted the prizes for 18years beginning in 1936 (Hohenberg, 1974: 173). UPI entered and won a prize for the first time the year after Cooper left the board. The Baltimore Sun won nine prizes from 1928 to 1953 when Kentwas on the board, and none in the 25 years following. Such facts naturally engender cynicism about the prizes, but Shaw argues an alternative view:

The best papers are generally represented on the board,and the best papers should (and do) win most of the Pulitzers. Newspapers represented by eight members of the 1979 board won forty-one Pulitzers while these men were on the board. But is that necessarily sinister? Oris it just plain fair and logical – inevitable? (Shaw, 1984: 190)

Regardless of how one answers that question, the inequality among winners clearly demonstrates the pitfalls in analyzing prize-winning stories, and even entries, as if they constitute a reasonable representation of American journalism. On a deeper level, this inequality poses a challenge to the legitimacy of theprizes’ role in journalistic socialization. Framed in those terms, the question becomes, to what extent does the Pulitzers’ socializing role involve keeping certain kinds of newspapers, journalists and stories out of prominence rather than in?

Some scholars suggest that small newspapers, for instance, are socialized out of the competition. One study found that only 47 of the nearly 700 prizes from 1917 to 2000 – just 7% – have been given to papers with circulations below 50,000 (Hatcher, 2007: 90).11 Expanding the analysis to include entry data improves the picture somewhat, though the disparity is still substantial. Of the 609 entries identified as examples of

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investigative reporting, for instance, 86 (14%) came from papers with circulations under 50,000. On the other hand, the reports were evenly distributed geographically, representing 149 cities in 45 states (Lanosga, 2010).

A look at the Pulitzer board and its juries raises a furtherissue about diversity of membership. The 122 individual jurors whose names are available in the jury reports from 1917 to 1960 are all men. It is a similar story with the Pulitzer board, whichdid not have a woman among its members until 1980. The gendered makeup of the prize establishment is reflected in the winners of the prizes as well; just four women won reporting prizes in the first 43 years of the contest.

Not Necessarily ProgressiveThe weight carried by the relatively small number of

individuals serving on the prize juries and the Pulitzer board can be enormous. Referring to cultural prizes generally, English noted the growth in power held by such administrative offices as prizes and prize entries have proliferated, contending about 98 percent of entries in open competitions are removed from contention before elite judges see a single submission (English, 2005: 136-137). Though members of the Pulitzer board are not restricted from viewing entries not recommended by the juries, asa practical matter because of the sheer volume of material, they do tend to rely heavily on the jury short lists.

So how does this small group of judges reviewing a small percentage of the entries fare in its role as an arbiter of quality journalism? Critics call it a mixed record, often citing what Time (1948) called ‘Pulitzer Prize Boners’: eyebrow-raising prize decisions such as awarding the public service prize to the New York Times for a survey on the teaching of American history in 1944. That year there were 15 investigative entries in the category, including, for instance, a St. Louis Star-Times story that

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exposed defective ammunition at the St. Louis ordnance plant and led to the indictment of ten employees.

Other wins cited as questionable include the 1931 reporting award to the Detroit Free Press for its coverage of an American Legionparade and the 1923 reporting award to a reporter’s coverage of ascience convention in Massachusetts. In its account of the Pulitzer winners in 1923, Time noted the odd choice:

The ‘best reporter,’ however, did not expose a great graft ring, did not describe a great national catastrophe, did not report a momentous political event, made no great ‘scoop.’ What he reported was a convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Cambridge, Mass. (Time, 1923)12

Perhaps the most serious complaint against the Pulitzers is that they have not, on balance, served to advance the cause of reform and redress of social problems. Karen Rothmyer charged that newspapers, and the Pulitzers, have sometimes overlooked themost important issues in American society: ‘In the 1930s, to judge by the Pulitzer winners, the most serious issue facing the country was municipal fraud, not the Great Depression or widespread calls for radical economic and political change’ (Rothmyer, 1991: 10).

Rothmyer based her contention on prize winners, but the prize entries analyzed here seem to support it, at least with regard to the 1930s. Investigative reports that won Pulitzer Prizes that decade probed voting fraud in Kentucky and Missouri, police abuses, Justice Hugo Black’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan, an unsolved murder case, lottery schemes, and yes, municipal waste and fraud. Following the model of socialization laid out above – that is, following the cues provided by the Pulitzer board – newspapers’ prize entries during the decade were accordingly concerned primarily with municipal graft. Only one newspaper in the ten-year span entered an investigation relating to the issues

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surrounding the Great Depression; the Los Angeles Times in 1933 submitted reporter Chester G. Hanson’s series on ‘the transient unemployed of the southwest.’ The reporting jury deemed Hanson’s reports among five ‘entries of exceptional merit’ but recommendedthe Associated Press’s coverage of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping for the reporting award. The board gave the prize to the AP.

‘[T]he stories that won Pulitzer Prizes seemed on the whole remarkably similar in subject matter and approach to those that had gone before,’ Rothmyer observed (Rothmyer, 1991: 10). Indeed,this socializing process of prizes could be described as creatinga sort of path dependency, in which early prize decisions tend toprescribe the types of entries that will come later (and in a broader sense, the type of journalism Americans would get in their newspapers).

The path, incidentally, can be either a progressive or a conservative one, depending on the winds of the moment. Though investigative reporting has strong roots in the muckraking era and progressive movement, it is not necessarily progressive – recall Westbrook Pegler’s use of investigative techniques to crusade against New Deal reforms and unionism, winning a Pulitzerprize in 1941 (Witwer, 2005). Similarly, the flurry of prize entries devoted to exposing Communist plots in the 1950s is suggestive of a conservative socializing influence. Frederick Woltman of the New York World-Telegram won the 1947 reporting prize for a series of stories about Communist infiltration. The following year, the Winston-Salem Journal and Twin City Sentinel (North Carolina) submitted a series that exposed Communist union influence. And in 1949, four more newspapers entered series aboutCommunist infiltration or activities. Such series would continue to crop up in the 1950s – in keeping with the tenor of the times,of course, but certainly encouraged by the Pulitzer board.13

Conclusion

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Ultimately, the critiques of Pulitzer Prize decision-making over the years suggest how influential prizes have been in the journalistic field. The awarding of prizes represents an exerciseof real power that confers value on individual journalists and their newspapers in the process of identifying stories and journalistic practices as desirable. During the four decades covered in this research, the prize process helped shape the contours of American journalism by, for instance, nurturing the exposé and encouraging certain topics for investigation. Prizes did not do this by themselves, but the culture that grew up around the Pulitzers – journalism’s first and still premier national award – exerted a powerful pull on prize-conscious newspapers and newspeople.

This paper is limited in scope by the time frame under analysis, which ends with the 1960 prize competition. Bringing the research current would likely be difficult given the Pulitzeradministration’s practice of keeping more recent jury materials confidential. Nevertheless, it is clear that the analysis of prize materials is one way scholars might meet the challenge of constructing a history of both the idea of a report and the powerful institutional structures that undergird it.

The picture that emerges from this work is one of a prize system that makes up an essential thread in the fabric of a developing professional journalistic culture. Historical Pulitzerrecords demonstrate the active role taken by the prize operation from the very beginning in promoting those stories and practices that would come to be considered reflective of exceptional journalism. As discussed previously, the exceptional nature of the prize materials means that this study does not purport to tell the story of newspaper journalism as it is. Rather, that exceptionalism holds a key to understanding how the journalism profession prefers to present and represent itself.

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Notes

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1 The records, cited individually within the text, come from the Pulitzer Prize Office, Columbia University, New York, with copies in possession of this author.2 A typical example of the latter is ‘Education: Pulitzer Awards,’

Time, 11 May 1931.3 This is a concern for scholars using prize material as well.

Because of the slow start for the prizes, it is likely that the entrypool in the first two decades or so provides a less representative sample of newspaper work than that in later years. 4 This document has a date of 1924, but it is clear from the context

that it is from the 1925 prize year.5 CPI Inflation Calculator, Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed

July 6, 2013, http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.6 For a discussion of how the Ponzi case and others figured into a

robust definition of the objectivity concept, see Lanosga, 2012.7 Cited in: Bent (1939). 8 For an example of the use of Pulitzers as the operational

definition of quality, see Logan & Sutter, 2004.9 For a detailed critique of prize seeking, see Bates, 1991.10 For a discussion of dominance of prestige newspapers in the

Pulitzer Prizes, see Shaw, 2006.11 For another example, see Bogart, 2004, p. 51.12 See also Rothmyer, Winning Pulitzers, 10.13 The board would also later recognize an investigation into false

accusations of subversion.

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