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Bad days at gawker.com, the prominent New York-based media-focused blogging site. Reporter Hamilton Nolan files on an unfortunate speech that Village Voice Media press lord Mike Lacey delivered a few days ago at an awards dinner in Phoenix: diners “were less than amused when (the white man) Lacey referred to his deceased friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning black journalist Tom Fitzpatrick, as ‘my nigger.’” No doubt they were, but Fitz’s many old friends in Chicago, where he won a Pulitzer in 1970 with the Sun-Times, will be surprised to hear that when he changed cities he changed races.
There’s a lot that might be said about the Pulitzers this year. Prizes were awarded in 11 writing categories in journalism and the Washington Post won six of them. The New York Times won a couple more, and was a finalist in three more categories. Maybe the Post, for all of its own cost-cutting woes, had a hell of a year. But if you want to argue that the Pulitzers are turning into a cozy old-boys club, or that so many papers have trimmed so much of their product that only a handful are even competitive any longer, the 2008 Pulitzers will help you make your case.
