Pulitzer Prize Luncheon Remarks 2004

Low Library, Columbia University – May 24, 2004

Andrew Barnes

Congratulations to you, the winners of the Pulitzer Prize. Your work is remarkable, and the honor deserved.

Today is a day for celebration, and there are too few days for celebration in these times. Go dancing. Pick some flowers. Break out the good wine.

I remember a lunch - it was on the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs, Florida - when Gene Patterson and I told our colleague Lucy Morgan that she had won the prize and it would be announced in an hour or so. Her work was an investigation of a sheriff corrupted by the mob, and it had been a grueling, draining year. All of a sudden it seemed worthwhile as her face lighted up.

The past year has been grueling and draining for American journalism as a whole. The editor of the New York Times, himself a Pulitzer winner as both a writer and an editor, is gone. The editor of USA Today is gone. Both were victims of writers who made it up. One of those writers' work was before the Pulitzer board a year or two ago. Thank goodness we didn't award it the prize.

Our heightened sensitivity has reached such a level that a colleague who had chaired one of the juries this year said to me he was concerned as these scandals played out that one project he particularly admired might have been 'too perfect' - nobody could have done work that difficult that well. His question was caution, which is always appropriate, not cynicism, but it does give a sense of where the world of journalism stands at the moment.

In the eight years I have been on the Pulitzer Board we have grappled with some tough problems. That is no secret. But I come away renewed in my belief that honest, consequential journalism is still practiced in many places across America.

Let me take a minute to explain how the Pulitzer system works.

Nominations in each of the 21 categories - five in letters, 11 in journalistic writing, plus drama, music, cartooning, two in photography - are submitted, often by editors or publishers, sometimes by friends or colleagues, occasionally by the author.

Each category has a jury made up of three to seven members, depending on the length of entries a category usually gets - there are very few 700-word entries in explanatory journalism - and their number, which can approach 200 in some categories.

When the jurors arrive for the newspaper judging in the World Room they are faced with whole tables stacked high with entries - binders of every shape and description. The jurors' first task is to whittle the piles down to a manageable number of entries, which can be read intimately before the jury argues through to a list of three finalists. It is three days of hard work, and an honor to be asked to do it.

A similar process is followed for the books, plays and music, though they obviously cannot all sit in the same room while they plough through the entries.

For those of us on the board, every year's calendar is dominated by the reading marathon that begins in December. With three finalists in each category it comes to 15 books (we all should have bought stock in Amazon), 33 journalism entries, some of which are longer than books, plus the music to be listened to, drama to be read and if possible seen, photos and cartoons.

There is a certain satisfaction in being able to say to yourself, I have 'done' that category. One year I was wiping my bow having completed the biographies when I noticed in a review that the author of one of the finalists, it was a biography of Herman Melville, was a man. The long Melville biography I had read and not much liked was by a woman. I had read the wrong Melville biography. My son Ben, whom I will quote again in a moment, proposed that I should pass if off as the diligence of erudition, making a few comparative points. I just cursed my carelessness, bought and read the nominated biography. It was a fine book, though it did not win.

My own rule of thumb is that I must have finished reading the books before the journalism entries arrive in great, thudding packages; otherwise it's really a scramble. Moreover, most of us are senior working journalists, a few are academics. In any case we all have day jobs, which can certainly conflict with this wonderful task of being surrogate readers for the general reading public.

Like all of us who have been around the Pulitzer Prizes for years I have been told several 'truths' that 'everybody knows' about how it all works.

One 'truth' is that a double byline scarcely stands a chance.

Another is that the board will not reward work that includes unnamed sources.

I have also been told, with complete certainty, that no short work ever wins. Also that long work has little chance.

We have discussed these and many other 'truths,' both formally and informally, and concluded that it is best to let our decisions speak for themselves.

I will, however, allow myself to make two observations. One comes again from my son Ben. I had explained all this to him when I was still new to the board. I said something to the effect that I was learning a great deal from the reading. 'Oh, now I understand,' said he. "You enroll in a course and at the end you give the grades.'

The other observation is that were you in the room, the process would reassure you. It is a body of generally informed people working hard to make the right judgments. But then you in this audience know that. You've all won.

I found this year's entries particularly stimulating and provocative. At a time when it can sometimes seem only cook books and diet books have any chance of reaching an audience; when newspapers are about to fall into desuetude, victim of the internet (if we can award the prize in criticism to a writer who calls a car insufferably twee I can speak of desuetude) - anyway, at a time when it can seem everything is falling apart I am happy to be able to report the best work published last year was as good as I can ever remember.

Your work, which we honor here today, sets the standard of aspiration for the rest of us. If I have a wish to make for each of you, it is that your best work is yet to come. But for today, celebrate. Winning a Pulitzer Prize is a wonderful thing.