Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Pulitzers: Degradation in Black and Print

It’s journalism’s annual paradox: the worst news is prized for its best renditions. The past year was equally bleak and fertile in scandals and repulsions, with this unhappy distinction: the United States, or rather Bush’s Estates of spying, rendition, repression, corruption and incompetence, stood as a city on the edge of a precipice for all the world to rue and mourn. The bleak and the shameful were as American as General Motors (and as encouraging as GM’s prospects). The year’s Pulitzers reflect the Great Degradation. (and its great foot-dragging: when will the prize committee wake up to the most original source of good writing in America today—in the world, rather—namely, blog prose?) Read the full story...