Pulitzer Prize

Columbia President Lee Bollinger presents the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction to Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Pulitzer Prize does not automatically consider all applicable works in the media, but only those that have specifically been entered. (There is a $75 entry fee, for each desired entry category.) Entries must fit in at least one of the specific prize categories, and cannot simply gain entrance for being literary or musical. Works can also be entered only in a maximum of two categories, regardless of their properties.[6]

Each year, 102 jurors are selected by the Pulitzer Prize Board to serve on 20 separate juries for the 21 award categories; one jury makes recommendations for both photography awards. Most juries consist of five members, except for those for Public Service, Investigative Reporting, Explanatory Reporting, Feature Writing and Commentary categories, which have seven members; however, all book juries have at least three members.[2] For each award category, a jury makes three nominations. The board selects the winner by majority vote from the nominations, or bypasses the nominations and selects a different entry following a 75 percent majority vote. The board can also vote to issue no award. The board and journalism jurors are not paid for their work; however, the jurors in letters, music, and drama receive a $2,000 honorarium for the year, and each chair receives $2,500.[2]

The Pulitzer Prize certificate of Mihajlo Pupin, which used a recycled Columbia diploma

Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to Columbia University to launch a journalism school and establish the Pulitzer Prize. It allocated $250,000 to the prize and scholarships.[12] He specified "four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and four traveling scholarships."[2] After his death on October 29, 1911, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded June 4, 1917 (they are now announced in April). The Chicago Tribune under the control of Colonel Robert R. McCormick felt that the Pulitzer Prize was nothing more than a 'mutual admiration society' and not to be taken seriously; the paper refused to compete for the prize during McCormick's tenure up until 1961.[13][14] Until 1975, the prizes were overseen by the trustees of Columbia University.

Pulitzer Prize
Joseph Pulitzer Columbia University Pulitzers by year Winners
Journalism
Reporting Breaking News Investigative Explanatory Local National International Audio Writing Feature Editorial Photography Breaking News Feature Other Commentary Criticism Editorial Cartooning Public Service Former Beat Reporting Correspondence Photography Reporting
Letters Drama Music
Biography / Autobiography Fiction General Nonfiction History Poetry Drama Music
Special Citations and Awards

Awards are made in categories relating to journalism, arts, letters and fiction. Reports and photographs by United States–based newspapers, magazines and news organizations (including news websites) that "[publish] regularly"[15] are eligible for the journalism prize. Beginning in 2007, "an assortment of online elements will be permitted in all journalism categories except for the competition's two photography categories, which will continue to restrict entries to still images."[16] In December 2008, it was announced that for the first time content published in online-only news sources would be considered.[17]

Although certain winners with magazine affiliations (most notably Moneta Sleet Jr.) were allowed to enter the competition due to eligible partnerships or concurrent publication of their work in newspapers, the Pulitzer Prize Advisory Board and the Pulitzer Prize Board historically resisted the admission of magazines into the competition, resulting in the formation of the National Magazine Awards at the Columbia Journalism School in 1966.

In 2015, magazines were allowed to enter for the first time in two categories (Investigative Reporting and Feature Writing). By 2016, this provision had expanded to three additional categories (International Reporting, Criticism and Editorial Cartooning).[18] That year, Kathryn Schulz (Feature Writing) and Emily Nussbaum (Criticism) of The New Yorker became the first magazine affiliates to receive the prize under the expanded eligibility criterion.[19]

In October 2016, magazine eligibility was extended to all journalism categories.[20] Hitherto confined to the local reporting of breaking news, the Breaking News Reporting category was expanded to encompass all domestic breaking news events in 2017.[21]

Definitions of Pulitzer Prize categories as presented in the December 2017 Plan of Award:[22]

• Public Service – for a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper, magazine or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of stories, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or other visual material. Often thought of as the grand prize, and mentioned first in listings of the journalism prizes, the Public Service award is only given to the winning news organization. Alone among the Pulitzer Prizes, it is awarded in the form of a gold medal.
• Breaking News Reporting – for a distinguished example of local, state or national reporting of breaking news that, as quickly as possible, captures events accurately as they occur, and, as time passes, illuminates, provides context and expands upon the initial coverage.
• Investigative Reporting – for a distinguished example of investigative reporting, using any available journalistic tool.
• Explanatory Reporting – for a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear presentation, using any available journalistic tool.
• Local Reporting – for a distinguished example of reporting on significant issues of local concern, demonstrating originality and community expertise, using any available journalistic tool.[16]
• National Reporting – for a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs, using any available journalistic tool.
• International Reporting – for a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, using any available journalistic tool.
• Feature Writing – for distinguished feature writing giving prime consideration to quality of writing, originality and concision, using any available journalistic tool.
• Commentary – for distinguished commentary, using any available journalistic tool.
• Criticism – for distinguished criticism, using any available journalistic tool.
• Editorial Writing – for distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in what the writer conceives to be the right direction, using any available journalistic tool.
• Editorial Cartooning – for a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons, characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, published as a still drawing, animation or both.
• Breaking News Photography, previously called Spot News Photography – for a distinguished example of breaking news photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs.
• Feature Photography – for a distinguished example of feature photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs.

There are six categories in letters and drama:

• Fiction – for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.
• Drama – for a distinguished play by an American playwright, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life.
• History – for a distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States.
• Biography or Autobiography – for a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author.
• Poetry – for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American poet.
• General Nonfiction – for a distinguished and appropriately documented book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category.

In 2020, the Audio Reporting category was added. The first prize in this category was awarded to "The Out Crowd", an episode of the public radio program This American Life. In the second year, the Pulitzer was awarded for the NPR podcast No Compromise.

There is one prize given for music:

• Pulitzer Prize for Music – for distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.

There have been dozens of Special Citations and Awards: more than ten each in Arts, Journalism, and Letters, and five for Pulitzer Prize service, most recently to Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. in 1987.

In addition to the prizes, Pulitzer Travelling Fellowships are awarded to four outstanding students of the Graduate School of Journalism as selected by the faculty.

Pulitzer Hall on the Columbia campus

The 19-member Pulitzer Prize Board[23] convenes semi-annually, traditionally in the Joseph Pulitzer World Room at Columbia University's Pulitzer Hall. It comprises major editors, columnists and media executives in addition to six members drawn from academia and the arts, including the president of Columbia University, the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the administrator of the prizes, who serves as the Board's secretary. The administrator and the dean (who served on the Board from its inception until 1954 and beginning again in 1976) participate in the deliberations as ex officio members, but cannot vote. Aside from the president and dean (who serve as permanent members for the duration of their respective appointments) and the administrator (who is re-elected annually), the Board elects its own members for a three-year term; members may serve a maximum of three terms. Members of the Board and the juries are selected with close attention "given to professional excellence and affiliation, as well as diversity in terms of gender, ethnic background, geographical distribution and size of news organization."

Former New York Times senior editor Dana Canedy, who contributed to the Times staff entry that received the 2001 National Reporting Prize, served as administrator from 2017 to 2020. Canedy was the first woman and first person of color to hold the position.[24][25] Edward Kliment, the program's longtime deputy administrator, was appointed interim administrator in July 2020 when Canedy became senior vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster's flagship eponymous imprint.[26] Former Associated Press and Los Angeles Times editor Marjorie Miller was named as Canedy's permanent successor in April 2022, with Kliment (who elected not to be considered for the position) remaining as deputy administrator.[27] Past administrators include John Hohenberg (the youngest person to hold the position to date; 1954–1976), fellow Graduate School of Journalism professor Richard T. Baker (1976–1981), former Newsweek executive editor Robert Christopher (1981–1992), former New York Times managing editor Seymour Topping (1993–2002), former Milwaukee Journal editor Sig Gissler (2002–2014) and former Concord Monitor editor Mike Pride (the only former board member to hold the position to date; 2014–2017). Prior to the installation of Hohenberg, the program was jointly administered by members of the Journalism School's faculty (most notably longtime dean Carl W. Ackerman) and officials in Columbia's central administration under the aegis of Frank D. Fackenthal.

Following the retirement of Joseph Pulitzer Jr. (a grandson of the endower who served as permanent chair of the board for 31 years) in 1986, the chair has typically rotated to the most senior member (or members, in the case of concurrent elections) on an annual basis.[28]

Since 1975, the Board has made all prize decisions; prior to this point, the Board's recommendations were ratified by a majority vote of the trustees of Columbia University.[2] Although the administrator's office and staff are housed alongside the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia's Pulitzer Hall and several administrators have held concurrent full-time or adjunct faculty appointments at the Journalism School, the Board and administration have been operationally separate from the School since 1950.[29]^: 121

• 1921 Fiction Prize: Columbia trustees overrule jury recommendation and award the prize to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence instead of the recommendation of Sinclair Lewis for Main Street.[30]
• Call for revocation of journalist Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize.
• Call for revocation of journalist William L. Laurence's 1946 Pulitzer Prize.
• 1941 Novel Prize: The advisory board elected to overrule the jury and recommended For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. However, Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler implored the committee to reconsider, citing the potential association between the university and the novel's frank sexual content; instead, no award was given.[29]^: 118 Twelve years later, Hemingway was awarded the 1953 Fiction Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.
• 1957 Biography Prize: The purported writer of Profiles in Courage, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, was believed to have had most of the book for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in Biography ghostwritten for him.[31] Journalist Drew Pearson claimed on an episode of The Mike Wallace Interview which aired in December 1957[32] that "John F. Kennedy is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him" and that his speechwriter Ted Sorensen was the book's actual author, though his claim later was retracted by the show's network, ABC, after Kennedy's father threatened to sue.[31] Herbert Parmet also determined that the book was in fact mostly ghostwritten, writing in his 1980 book Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy that although Kennedy did oversee the production and provided for the direction and message of the book, it was in fact Sorensen who provided most of the work that went into the end product.[33] Sorenson himself would later admit in his 2008 autobiography, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, that he did in fact write "a first draft of most of the chapters" and "helped choose the words of many of its sentences".[34][35] In addition to the ghostwriting controversy, it was also determined two of the eight U.S. Senators profiled in the book, Edmund G. Ross and Lucius Lamar, did not actually match what the book glorified them as.[36][37]
• 1962 Biography Prize: Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst by W. A. Swanberg was recommended by the jury and advisory board but overturned by the trustees of Columbia University (then charged with final ratification of the prizes) because its subject, Hearst, was not an "eminent example of the biographer's art as specified in the prize definition."[38]
• 1974 Fiction Prize: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon was recommended by the three-member fiction jury, but the advisory board overturned that decision and no award was given by the trustees.[39]
• Shortly after receiving a Special Citation for Roots: The Saga of an American Family in the spring of 1977, Alex Haley was charged with plagiarism in separate lawsuits by Harold Courlander and Margaret Walker Alexander. Courlander, an anthropologist and novelist, charged that Roots was copied largely from his novel The African (1967). Walker claimed that Haley had plagiarized from her Civil War-era novel Jubilee (1966). Legal proceedings in each case were concluded late in 1978. Courlander's suit was settled out of court for $650,000 (equivalent to $2.7 million in 2021) and an acknowledgment from Haley that certain passages within Roots were copied from The African.[40] Walker's case was dismissed by the court, which, in comparing the content of Roots with that of Jubilee, found that "no actionable similarities exist between the works."[41][42]
• 1981 Feature Writing Prize: Washington Post staff writer Janet Cooke returned the award after an investigation by the newspaper found she fabricated her prize-winning story "Jimmy's World," a profile of an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, D.C.
• 1994 History Prize: Gerald Posner's Case Closed; Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, Lawrence Friedman's Crime and Punishment in American History and Joel Williamson's William Faulkner and Southern History were nominated unanimously for the award; however, no award was given.[43] The decision not to give an award to one of the three books created a public controversy. One of the 19 members of the Pulitzer Board, John Dotson, said that all of the three nominated books were "flawed in some way." But another board member, Edward Seaton, editor of The Manhattan Mercury, disagreed, saying it was "unfortunate" that no award had been given.[44]
• 2010 Drama Prize: The Tony-winning musical Next to Normal received the award[45] despite not having been among the jury-provided nominees.[46][47]
• 2020 Feature Photography Prize: The citation to Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of the Associated Press caused controversy.[48][49][50] It was taken by some as questioning "India's legitimacy over Kashmir" as it had used the word "independence" in regard to revocation of Article 370.[51]
• 2020 International Reporting Prize: Russian journalist Roman Badanin, editor-in-chief of independent Russian media outlet Proekt (Project), said that at least two New York Times articles in the entry repeated findings of Proekt's articles published a few months before.[52]

Some critics of the Pulitzer Prize have accused the organization of favoring those who support liberal causes or oppose conservative causes. Syndicated columnist L. Brent Bozell Jr. said that the Pulitzer Prize has a "liberal legacy", particularly in its prize for commentary.[53] He pointed to a 31-year period in which only five conservatives won prizes for commentary. 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary Kathleen Parker wrote, "It's only because I'm a conservative basher that I'm now recognized."[54] Alexander Theroux describes the Pulitzer Prize as "an eminently silly award, [that] has often been handed out as a result of pull and political log-rolling, and that to some of the biggest frauds and fools alike."[55]

A 2012 academic study by journalism professors Yong Volz of the University of Missouri and Francis Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong found "that only 27% of Pulitzer winners since 1991 were females, while newsrooms are about 33% female."[56] The researchers concluded female winners were more likely to have traditional academic experience, such as attendance at Ivy League schools, metropolitan upbringing, or employment with an elite publication such as The New York Times. The findings suggest a higher level of training and connectedness are required for a female applicant to be awarded the prize, compared to male counterparts.[57]

• Media related to Pulitzer Prize at Wikimedia Commons
• Works related to Pulitzer Prize at Wikisource
• Official website
• Pulitzer Prizes Collection at Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library
• Writers of African Descent to Win Pulitzer Prizes