From the Editor

Check out the Pulitzers

Wed, 04/12/2017 - 11:30am

    My email blast from Editor & Publisher arrived Tuesday morning with a listing of this year's Pulitzer Prizes for journalism (http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year), which were announced on Monday. I haven't looked at or read them all, but the ones I have looked at made me shake my head in disbelief, the disbelief in the hardships humans are facing around the world, including right here in the United States.

    The first category I perused was the Breaking News Photography and the winning photos are nothing like what you would see on the nightly news. The images, “showing the callous disregard for human life in the Philippines brought about by a government assault on drug dealers and users,” as quoted from the Pulitzer website, were published in the New York Times. Dead and bloody bodies everywhere. The winning photographer shot 41 crime scenes over 35 days in Manila. Over 3,500 unsolved homicides were recorded in the Philippines between June and November 2016.

    Under Feature Photography, two of the finalists presented photo essays; one captured images from Flint, Michigan’s contaminated water crisis and another chronicled the “front lines of Brazil’s war on Zika that showed the vulnerability, fear and love of mothers coping with the crisis,” as quoted from the website.

    I suggest reading the winners' and finalists' entries – there are many more categories. They will make you shake your head in disbelief and the Pulitzer Prizes honor the best of the best in newspaper coverage. It makes all journalists envious.