
The Guardian and Washington Post win the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service  - danso
http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2014-Public-Service
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danso
Journalism geekery: the "Public Service" award is often considered the best of
the Pulitzers, partly because it is relatively equally distributed among
smaller, lesser-known organizations as well as the big organizations...so it's
sort of a implicit statement on how great journalism shouldn't be dependent on
market size and staff resources.

So when a big organization like the Washington Post, and the Guardian US, win
it, that's a strong statement. They could've just as likely been given the
National or Investigative reporting awards.

(also, unlike the other prizes, there is no cash prize for the Public Service
award)

The WaPo has won it before, including for Watergate and the Walter Reed
investigation: [http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Public-
Service](http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Public-Service)

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etiam
In terms of importance, I think this was practically a given, but I've seen
statements from people doubting if the Pulitzer Prize Board would have the
courage to make a decision that still wouldn't sit well with certain powerful
people.

Turns out they did. I'm very pleased to see that. Congratulations to the
winners!

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swombat
Glad to see they didn't pull a TIME magazine...

~~~
willvarfar
(please explain?)

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jxf
Time Magazine has an annual feature called "Person of the Year", in which they
devote the cover story of the issue to talking about the most influential
person of the year.

There is a perception among some people that the selection process is biased
away from controversial figures. Last year's Person of the Year was Pope
Francis; some people thought it should have been (e.g.) Edward Snowden. He was
the runner-up.

~~~
cabalamat
> There is a perception among some people that the selection process is biased
> away from controversial figures

Its's more than a perception, they've tacitly admited it. Wikipedia:

 _As a result of the public backlash it received from the United States for
naming the Khomeini as Man of the Year in 1979, Time has shied away from using
figures that are controversial in the United States due to commercial reasons.
Time 's Person of the Year 2001, immediately following the September 11, 2001
attacks, was New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, although the stated rules
of selection, the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest
effect on the year's news, made Osama bin Laden a more likely choice. The
issue that declared Giuliani the Person of the Year included an article that
mentioned Time's earlier decision to elect the Ayatollah Khomeini and the 1999
rejection of Hitler as "Person of the Century". The article seemed to imply
that Osama bin Laden was a stronger candidate than Giuliani, as Adolf Hitler
was a stronger candidate than Albert Einstein._

~~~
untog
It's kind of sad, really. Person Of The Year should not necessarily be a
positive thing - just the most important person of the year. But we're long
since past that now.

~~~
coldpie
Well, the phrasing "X of the year" is almost always taken to mean "best X of
the year". Consider "movie of the year," "book of the year," and so on.
Probably they should have called it "Most Influential person of the year" to
avoid the default fallback of "Best person of the year".

~~~
rhizome
Decades ago, Time had enough credibility that their awarding "Man of the Year"
was seen as an influential act. I don't know if it was Khomeni, economics, or
what, but Time has driven their brand into the ground far enough that they are
now awarding it to "gosh I hope so" recipients like the pope, similar to
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.

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hpriebe
Interesting to see that the runner up - Newsday - was selected for using
digital tools to expose shootings, beatings and other concealed misconduct by
some Long Island police officers. This highlights the increasingly
complimentary role of digital tools and traditional reporting.

Anyone know what kind of digital tools they used?

Anyone know of other digital tools journalists/the press use to
investigate/uncover content?

~~~
danso
Data journalism geek here: All sorts of tools, but really, Excel and Access
are adequate enough to be game-changers...this is because data has no
standardized form when you get to local jurisdictions.

Jeremy Singer-Vine, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, was named a Pulitzer
finalist for National Reporting this year
([http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/2014?](http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/2014?)):

> _John Emshwiller and Jeremy Singer-Vine of The Wall Street Journal - For
> their reports and searchable database on the nation’s often overlooked
> factories and research centers that once produced nuclear weapons and now
> pose contamination risks._

HNers may remember some of Jeremy's stuff recently making the front page,
including:

Reverse Engineering xkcd's Frequency:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7290868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7290868)

Txtbirds:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763147)

~~~
001sky
_Excel and Access are adequate enough to be game-changers_

Without doubting your point here, do you think access to data is driving the
underlying ability to leverage these tools? Or is it just people have now
started to look harder at the problems with an analytic toolkit in mind?

~~~
danso
I think _access to data_ is key. One of the hardest challenges is dealing --
in an empirical manner -- with paper documents, or anything that doesn't come
in a spreadsheet...which, until relatively recently, was the norm of
information distribution.

But I think we (as a society) are just beginning to make _use of data_ , in
terms of analysis and general computational thinking. To go back to the domain
of journalism...Aron Pilhofer, who heads the interactive news team at the New
York Times, said that in "one day...we can teach you the skills that if
mastered would allow you to do 80 percent of all the computer-assisted
reporting that has ever been done" ([http://knight.stanford.edu/life-
fellow/2012/times-editor-say...](http://knight.stanford.edu/life-
fellow/2012/times-editor-says-media-not-driven-to-data-journalism/))...I think
this is still the case.

As an example, you don't have to go back much further than last year's Public
Service Pulitzer...probably my favorite winner in modern times:
[http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2013-Public-
Service](http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2013-Public-Service)

The reporters took a sensational story (off-duty cops being caught on YouTube
egregiously breaking the speed limit) and opted to do an empirical analysis.
But of course, what they were trying to find -- cops who broke the law by
speeding -- was inherently non-existent, in terms of public records (because
it is the cops who determine whether the law is broken). So instead, the
reporters requested toll booth records, which recorded the passing through of
each cop car. Taking distance divided by time, they were able to prove so
convincingly how egregious the abuse was that Florida police stations pretty
much rolled over and immediately repented.

Besides whatever database they used to hold the data, the analysis here is
literally elementary level. This is not to say that the reporters' had it easy
(they still had to do all the footwork, interviews, confrontations, and fact-
checking, among other things), but it just goes to show you how many important
stories are out there, in every jurisdiction, that only need someone who cares
enough to do some counting and arithmetic. I kind of love the Public Service
awards because of how they recognize these relatively non-sexy, but incredibly
important stories done by determined and clever journalists.

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jwr
...while Edward Snowden, the source of all the information they published, is
being hunted down and prosecuted.

Hmm.

~~~
orky56
Reporting what was discovered and obtaining such information are separate
actions that deserve their own consequences. It doesn't automatically make it
right nor does it automatically make it wrong.

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spacefight
This is great news and well deserved. I hope that the price strongly motivates
those in charge at either news company to press on with their coverage.

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lawnchair_larry
So I guess Glenn Greenwald is officially a journalist.

~~~
dublinben
Greenwald isn't named in the award announcement. He'll still be listed as a
blogger in the traditional press.

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subdane
The awards are for breaking the Snowden secret surveilance revelations.

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e15ctr0n
The full list of winners[0] and runners-up[1] is available on pulitzer.org.

[0] [http://www.pulitzer.org/node/8501](http://www.pulitzer.org/node/8501)

[1]
[http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/2014](http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/2014)

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dobbsbob
No love for Der Spiegel?

~~~
abat
Pulitzers are US only. Technically, The Guardian US (and not UK) won.

