New media recognized in Pulitzer competition

NEW YORK — When the Pulitzer board handed out the most important prizes in journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post topped the list of winners— and finalists — as usual.

But they were joined for the first time by new media outlets that scored unprecedented recognition in a competition long dominated by newspapers.

On Monday, judges awarded the nonprofit ProPublica, in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine, a Pulitzer in investigative reporting for a 13,000-word story on the life-and-death decisions made by New Orleans doctors during Hurricane Katrina. The fledgling, 2-year-old service and the Los Angeles Times were also recognized as finalists for the public service prize for a piece that exposed gaps in California's oversight of the nursing industry.

"It is a validation," said Stephen Engelberg, managing editor for ProPublica. "To be recognized by your peers is an honor and it sort of says to the rest of the group: "Yes, they're here. They're real. They are doing very serious journalism.'"

The Manhattan-based ProPublica, with just over 30 employees, is bankrolled by charitable foundations, staffed by veteran journalists, and devoted to doing the kind of investigative journalism projects many newspapers have found too expensive. It offers many of its stories to traditional news organizations, free of charge.

Also representing a new model was the prize for editorial cartooning, which was won by the self-syndicated Mark Fiore. His animated cartoons with sound appear on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site SFGate.com. Matt Wuerker of Politico was a finalist for the second year in a row for the cartooning award.

Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler said there were about 100 online entrants this year, up from 65 a year ago in the online publications' first year of eligibility. Many were submitted from smaller, local sites, he said.

"You could see they're really doing serious journalism," he said. "I think over time they're going to get stronger."

The Pulitzer board also noted the way newspapers used social networks, online content and other new media to break new journalistic ground. The Seattle Times employed Twitter and e-mail alerts to help inform readers about a deadly shooting, and it used the social media tool Google Wave to encourage reader participation.

Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Poynter Institute, a journalism school, said those organizations don't need a Pulitzer to somehow feel that their work is more validated.

"But it's a neat thing to have," he said.