If you followed the awarding of the Pulitzer prizes on Monday, you may have noticed that the judges chose "no winner" in the category of newspaper editorial writing. As a blogger whose job it is to scan newspaper websites for the most interesting opinion writing each morning, I have to admit, I often skip editorial pages. On national political topics, many of them, such as the Washington Post, are completely predictable. But at Portfolio, media columnist Jeff Bercovici talks to the passed-over editorial writing nominees, and reminds us that editorials are a genre uniquely suited to advocating for change on the local level. A look at the nominees reminds us of the important work editorials can do, but also why it may have been difficult for the judges to make a choice.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Maureen Downey was nominated for her series of editorials against Georgia's "draconian sex laws," which resulted in Genarlow Wilson, then 17-years old, being sentenced to 10 years in prison for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year old girl at a high school party. Wilson's case received a lot of national attention, and he was released after serving three years in prison. But Downey kept the spotlight on other Georgians entrapped by the laws. Some are on sex-offender registries alongside serial child molesters for consensual sex they had in high school. Still, the Wilson case is a complex issue that the Pulitzer judges may not have wanted to weigh in on; although the 15-year old girl at the party has maintained that the oral sex was consensual, a second young woman accused Wilson of raping her that night. Video tape filmed at the party showed she was intoxicated and disoriented as Wilson had sex with her.
Roger Jones of The Dallas Morning News was nominated for editorials against "ghost voting," by which members of the Texas State Legislature don't actually have to be present on the floor, or even in Austin, to register their vote on a piece of legislation. But the proposal to install finger-print readers on each legislator's voting machine, which the paper supported, would have cost $400,000. Isn't there a simpler way to ensure honest voting? Like through a verbal roll call?
The final nominee was the staff of the Wisconsin State Journal, for a series of editorials against the Wisconsin Governor's "Frankenstein veto," which allows the executive to essentially rewrite legislation before signing it into law. Ellen Foley, the paper's editor, has said she believes the series was overlooked by the Pulitzer board because it relied heavily upon videos and other multimedia products on the web to make its point.
It's a shame no winner was chosen, because editorials can be an important public service genre. The topics these regional papers have tackled should remind national journalists of some crucial under-the-radar issues.
--Dana Goldstein
