How the Web Dominated the Breaking News Pulitzer Prize

24 Apr 2009 17:01 Africa/Lagos

Nieman Journalism Lab: How the Web Dominated the Breaking News Pulitzer Prize

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 24 /PRNewswire/ -- The three newspapers honored by the Pulitzer Prize Board for Breaking News all shared a common thread: They used the web as their primary outlet, not ink-on-paper.


The New York Times -- which won the prize -- and finalists the Houston Chronicle and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch each shifted to a web-first mentality when faced with big breaking news. That was true whether the news was a prostitution scandal (Times), a hurricane (Chronicle), or a shooting (Post-Dispatch).


"We cover news any way people need news," Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen told the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. We cover it online, analog, digital, straight media -- any way you can serve it up, our staff is serving it up."


In-depth analysis of each of the Pulitzer finalists can be found at:


New York Times Wins Pulitzer Prize


Breaking News Winners


The Nieman Journalism Lab is a project at Harvard University to figure out the future of quality journalism online. Its site is http://www.niemanlab.org/.


Source: Nieman Journalism Lab

CONTACT: Joshua Benton, director of Nieman Journalism Lab,
joshua_benton@harvard.edu


Web Site: http://www.niemanlab.org/