Posted on 04/06/2011 6:34:24 PM PDT by bronxville
FULL TITLE - St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact, Lane DeGregory win 2009 Pulitzer Prizes
For the first time in its 125-year history, the St. Petersburg Times has won two Pulitzer Prizes in a single year.
Staff writer Lane DeGregory, 42, captured the feature writing category for "The Girl in the Window," a moving account of a Plant City child whose mother kept her locked in a filthy room, and the adoptive family who worked to overcome her feral beginnings.
The Times staff won the national reporting prize for PolitiFact, a Web site, database and "Truth-O-Meter'' that tests the validity of political statements.
That award reflected the growing influence of online media in public affairs. PolitiFact was designed for the Web at politifact.com, though its content also appears regularly in the Times' print edition.
The two awards are "so representative of our organization as a team, of the skill we bring to work every day,'' Executive Editor Neil Brown told the newsroom staff Monday amid cheers and popping champagne corks.
Like newspapers all over the country, the Times is navigating tough economic times, Brown said, but "this is old-fashioned journalism, great reporting and great writing. Nothing has changed about that. This is what we do.''
The Pulitzers, awarded by Columbia University, are widely regarded as journalism's highest accolade. The only other newspaper to win more than one prize in this year's 14 categories was the New York Times, with five.
The St. Petersburg Times previously had won six Pulitzers, its most recent coming in 1998....
..."The Girl in the Window" was published last August, with photos by Melissa Lyttle.
Danielle was 7 when neighbors spotted her face through a broken window of her home. Detectives found her in diapers, her skeletal body raw from bug bites.
She couldn't speak.
A Fort Myers family adopted her, and DeGregory chronicled their efforts to draw her from her silent shell.
Within a month of publication, more than 1 million people read the story online. Calls to authorities from Tampa Bay residents wanting to adopt foster children jumped 33 percent.[...]
[...]Times staff writer John Barry was a Pulitzer finalist in the feature category for "Winter's Tale," an account of a dolphin with a prosthetic tail and a disabled girl who befriended it.
PolitiFact was conceived by Washington bureau chief Bill Adair during the runup to the 2008 presidential election.
Adair, 47, felt frustrated in earlier campaigns by a lack of time and resources to fact-check political rhetoric.
"We had neglected this aspect of reporting too long,'' said Adair, a 20-year Times veteran. "With the Web, we had the tools to do reporting better and the tools to be able to publish in new ways.''
With the green light from Times' brass, Adair skipped traditional campaign coverage and worked full time on PolitiFact.
The PolitiFact team included editors Scott Montgomery and Amy Hollyfield, reporter and researcher Angie Drobnic Holan, reporters Robert Farley and Alexander Lane, news technologist Matthew Waite and designer Martin Frobisher.
The team combed through political ads, speeches and debates, and summarized the findings on a "Truth-O-Meter,'' which labeled statements as True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, False or Pants on Fire.
A searchable database kept the rulings accessible.
Soon other media outlets were quoting PolitiFact as an authority on public discourse, and Adair was appearing on CNN and National Public Radio.
About 95 percent of the Web site's hits come from outside the Tampa Bay area and 10 percent from outside the United States.
"This is such a terrible time for newspapers, and I think our winning today is a sign that the Web is not a death sentence for newspapers,'' Adair said. "We need to look at it as an opportunity.''
For the first time this year, the Pulitzer board invited entries in all categories from Web-only news operations. The Times won the only prize for content created for the Web....
http://www.tampabay.com/features/media/article993724.ece
The stories are sad and good came from the story about the little girl BUT Paul Tash the editor, chairman and CEO of the St. Petersburg Times is on the Pulitzer Prize Board. I don't work in Jourolism but in my field of work this would be called unethical. TWO Pulitzer Prizes places PolitiFacts on another level but are they deserving?
The Poytner Institute Advisory Board consists of journolists from CNN, HuffPo, MSNBC, NBC, Time, Inc., The New York Times, Time, Inc., The Sacramento Bee... Poytner owns Times Publishing Co and the St. Petersberg Times.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/01/prweb3447444.htm http://www.pulitzer.org/board/2009--
- Paul Tash, left, editor, chairman and CEO of the St. Petersburg Times, applauds staff writer Lane DeGregory and Washington bureau chief Bill Adair, right, after they won Pulitzer Prizes. Only one other newspaper won more awards on Monday. - (what they don't mention is that Paul Tash in on the Pullitzer Prize Board)
Amazing. Politifac is the most liberal biased thing in a lib paper; I get the slimes
- Pulitzer Prize Board 2008–2009 - front row: A. Gyllenhaal, J. Dehli, T. Friedman, R. Oppel, A.M. Lipinski, S. Gissler, K.A. Willey, A. Bennett - back row: K. Carroll, D. Allen, P. Gigot, G. Moore, P. Tash, D. Kennedy, R. Beck, J. Amoss
People use PolitiFacts like they’re gods because of their Pulitizers. Cronyism! MSNBC just used them against Michele Bachmann.
Here’s the real story from Mathew Vadum...
In May 2009, PolitiFact.com rated a statement published on the website of Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, that the organization ACORN “could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars”, as “false”, calling it “beyond preposterous” that they would receive this amount.[3] Conservative analyst Matthew Vadum, who was the original source of the assertion, defended his statement in The American Spectator, saying that he meant only that there were no legal impediments to ACORN receiving the money; he then called PolitiFact.com’s writings “political opinion masquerading as high-minded investigative journalism.”[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PolitiFact
Continued from post #3
The Board presided over the judging process that resulted in the 2009 winners and finalists. —Richard Oppel, chair; Sig Gissler, administrator.
Allen, Danielle, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
Amoss, Jim, editor, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, LA
Beck, Randell, president and publisher, Argus Leader Media, Sioux Falls, SD
Bennett, Amanda, executive editor/Enterprise, Bloomberg News
Bollinger, Lee C., president, Columbia University, New York, NY
Carroll, Kathleen, executive editor and senior vice president, Associated Press
Dehli, Joyce, vice president for news, Lee Enterprises
Friedman, Thomas L., columnist, The New York Times, New York, NY
Gigot, Paul, editorial page editor, The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY
Gissler, Sig, administrator, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York, NY
Gyllenhaal, Anders, executive editor, The Miami Herald, Miami, FL
Harris, Jay T., Wallis Annenberg Chair, Director, Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Kennedy, David M., Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Lemann, Nicholas, dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York, NY
Lipinski, Ann Marie, vice president for civic engagement, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Moore, Gregory L., editor, The Denver Post, Denver, CO
Oppel, Richard, former editor, Austin American-Statesman, Austin, TX
Tash, Paul C., editor, chairman and CEO, The St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, FL
Willey, Keven Ann, vice president/editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News
http://www.pulitzer.org/board/2009—
Paul C. Tash is the editor of The St. Petersburg Times and chairman and CEO of the Times Publishing Company.
A native of South Bend, Indiana, Tash graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1976. He received a Marshall Scholarship and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of laws degree from Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1978.
He started with the Times that fall as a local news reporter. He also has been a Tallahassee reporter, the city editor, metropolitan editor, Washington bureau chief and executive editor for the Times. From 1990-91, Tash was the editor and publisher of Florida Trend, a statewide business magazine owned by the Times Publishing Company.
Tash is chairman of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a school for journalists, which owns Times Publishing. He also serves on the board of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Newspaper Association of America. Tash is a director of Western Communications, an independent newspaper company based in Bend, Oregon, and he is a member of the Florida Council of 100, a group of business leaders.
Tash is married to the former Karyn Krayer of St. Petersburg, a high school teacher, and they have two daughters, seniors in college and high school.
The St. Petersburg Times is an independent newspaper and Florida’s largest daily, with an average circulation of 330,000 and 410,000 on Sunday. The Times has won six Pulitzer Prizes, and it is consistently ranked among the country’s best newspapers. Times Publishing also owns Congressional Quarterly, a news and information service and book publisher based in Washington, DC, and Governing magazine.
Tash joined The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2006.
Bio Last Updated: January 5, 2007
http://www.pulitzer.org/boardmember/150/2009
I would love to go back and review ALL the Pulitzer Prizes.
Was this newspaper always like this or just since Tash tookover in 2002’ish? It was owned by the Poytners, father and son...White was selected by the son to takeover and when White retired in 2002 he handed it over to Tash.
Hmmm....
Obama wins the Nobel peace prize, and Politi-fact wins a Pulitzer, and, the truth is a bunch of lies and the lies are the truth and black is white and white is black and good is evil and evil is good and up is down and down is up...
and then people wonder why the world is so screwed up.
NOT White - should have written Bob Mitchell.
Nobel Prizes are something else that needs a review though someone has probably done it already and it didn’t get reported - prob the same with the Pulitzers.
“For the first time in its 125-year history, the St. Petersburg Times has won two Pulitzer Prizes in a single year.”
That’s like Goebbels winning a pat on the back from Himmler’s SS.
Are you serious about this crap, listing post after post, spewing names, dates and times?
What’s your point?
Poynter Receives $400,000 FORD GRANT (my emphasis) as ‘Sense-Making’ Project Enters Third Year
Posted on Mar. 14, 2011
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The Poynter Institute has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to continue the Sense-Making Project, an initiative designed to promote the public’s participation in democracy by tracking, explaining and nurturing new developments in journalism.
In its first two years, the Sense-Making Project trained dozens of non-traditional journalists and entrepreneurs, guided two small startups, documented trends in the Fifth Estate, and provided leadership and training for traditional journalism organizations in the midst of transformation.
President Karen B. Dunlap. “Through the Sense-Making work, Poynter has been able to influence new and veteran journalists to embrace the work of journalism in service of democracy.”
Among the project’s highlights in 2010 was the “Fact or Friction” conference, a day-long gathering at the Newseum in Washington D.C., (Newseum is yet another leftie outfit) at which more than 125 leaders and practitioners from the Fourth and Fifth Estates gathered to explore their common ground, differences and potential for working together.
In its first two years, the Sense-Making Project trained dozens of non-traditional journalists and entrepreneurs, guided two small startups, documented trends in the Fifth Estate, and provided leadership and training for traditional journalism organizations in the midst of transformation.
This year, the Sense-Making Project will continue its focus on in-person training, developing online training options and disseminating findings to the widest possible audience.
Plans include:
• Two in-person seminars, each hosting 16 to 20 participants, one specifically for entrepreneurs and one for bloggers and social organizers who work with underserved communities and attempt to hold those in positions of power accountable.
• Two online group seminars, each hosting 16 to 20 participants, one for entrepreneurs and one for bloggers or social organizers who work with underserved communities. • A self-directed online course, designed for non-traditional journalists to learn best practices.
• Daily updates on Poynter’s website, www.poynter.org, that draw attention to best practices and harmful practices of the Fifth Estate.
“From the beginning of this initiative, Ford has shared Poynter’s vision for helping citizens better understand how to make sense of the dizzying amount of news and information now available to all of us,” said Kelly McBride, Poynter’s ETHICS GROUP LEADER (did she know Tash was on the Pulitzer Prize Board?) and lead faculty for the Sense-Making programs. “In our first two years, we’ve learned much about the new journalism and met many non-traditional journalists who share the values we believe are essential to journalism excellence.”
Read full story...
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/01/prweb3447444.htm
It looks like they’re training the nontraditional journolists not unlike they trained the ACORN people for community activism. They probably sit them behind computers to dig dirt on Repubs for politifacts. The mini-journolists send the dirt to the traditional journolist who reviews and writes it up, they then resend a cleaned product back to the mini-journolists to message out.
I’m grateful you at least read the first line but would be more impressed if you read the full story. Sorry I’m not your mother to hand it to you in a platter. Perhaps if you’d asked nicely I’d have obliged but as that didn’t happen...sorry. :)
Oooookay then...can you read 3 lines? See post #1. The rest of it is for posterity or hopefully someone with a blog will actually read it and turn it into a story. Get it? Good.
- Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University (left), presents the 2009 National Reporting prize to (l-r) BILL ADAIR, Scott Montgomery and Neil Brown of the St. Petersburg Times. (2008)
Times forms PolitiFact partnership with Austin, Texas, newspaper
By Bill Adair, PolitiFact Editor
In Print: Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The St. Petersburg Times and the Austin American-Statesman today are launching PolitiFact Texas, a partnership that will use the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking approach to examine the 2010 campaigns in the Lone Star State...
The Times will be seeking news organizations in other states that want to form similar partnerships.
PolitiFact, launched in 2007, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting...
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/times-forms-politifact-partnership-with-austin-texas-newspaper/1065038
They are using these Pulitzers like a badge of honor yet they were given to them by their boss whose on the Pulitzer Prize board. They need to consult their ethical department.
ping
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