Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Half full or half empty? I suppose that depends on if you're drinking the Kool-Aid or not.

Today is to journalism what the Academy Awards is to the movie industry. Pulitzer Prize day. Win a Pulitzer, and you've been validated as the best in your field. For small and mid-size papers, earning a Pulitzer means you are as good as anyone, New York Times be damned. It is an honor that bestows far more than a $10,000 award and a citation from Columbia University, it is an honor that instills pride in your work, your paper, your choice of a profession.

And despite the constant drumbeat of dreadful news raining on the industry for well over a year, today was no different. Despite the constant drumbeat of dreadful news raining on the industry for well over a year, the Pulitzer Committee's selection for its 2009 awards reassures us that great journalism endures, that great journalism will never die, that great journalism is as important to this country as any bill coming out of Congress.

So much for the Kool-Aid.

A Pulitzer for local reporting (Detroit Free Press) went to a newspaper hanging on for dear life - a newspaper facing such financial turmoil that just last month it cut back its home delivery to but three days a week. Another Pulitizer for local reporting (East Valley Tribune of Mesa, Ariz.) was shared by a reporter who was laid off before he could find out he earned journalism's most prestigious prize. A third went to the editorial cartoonist of a paper (The San Diego Union-Tribune) that is in the midst of being sold to a Beverly Hills private equity firm.

Me? I've always liked Kool-Aid. Fact is, this is our second Pulitzer in four years, not bad for a paper that during that time has survived three rounds of buyouts (or is it four? I lose track) and is on the brink of a second round of layoffs. The recipient, Steve Breen is the best in the business. And as long as he doesn't take a buyout or suffer a layoff, we have a pretty good chance of winning another one soon.

...Speaking of layoffs
No word yet on whether I'll be working at my cush 50-60-hour-per-week, do-the-work-of-two-people job much longer. Everything I hear is that layoffs won't come until after Platinum's purchase becomes final. Which, sources say, will be announced come Monday, April 27.