Courtesy of Gawker
We at USDemocrazy are pretty big fans of the news. That’s why, when 2009’s Pulitzer Prize winners were announced on Monday, we were on the edge of our seats. (OK, well, not literally because there was this baseball game on, and we were pretty into that, then we had to take a nap, and… well, nevermind.)
But we did hear that this year was the first time the Prize committee considered entries from online-only news sources, which is great because we may have a shot at one next year! (Don’t you think??) But enough about us… Turns out that the awards were announced amid a swirl of turmoil in the world of print media.
The news about newspapers is not good. They are laying off writers and editors, selling sections of the paper, shrinking (literally… newspapers are getting smaller), and posting ridiculous losses. Most people are getting more and more of their news online, which present print papers with a positively puzzling predicament: How to make money in this funky new media landscape?
The Pulitzer Prize, which awards great work in journalism, literature, photography, and music, reminded us all of the media sob story, especially when one Prize went to writers who had been laid off.
A story on NPR’s Morning Edition reminds of the stress the newspaper industry is under, due to it not making money and there being a low demand for old-fashioned ink-on-your-fingers black-and-white-and-read-all-over papers, even noticing that the New York Times celebrated its five wins in a news room that no longer belongs to them.
We at USDemocrazy, appreciators of very fine journalistic talent, congratulate all of the Pulitzer winners and are proposing that they all pool together their prize money to save the newspaper industry…
Oh, it’ll take like, billions of dollars you say? Nevermind. Maybe they should just keep the money to pay off their mortgages!
Where do you all see the future of print media? Is there a future at all? While you guys figure that out, we’ll be working on our Pulitzer Prize-winning piece for next year.
[...] we at USDemocrazy are nutzo for the ‘net. We’ve also talked before about our passion for paper. Thus, we get kinda depressed when we hear of major American newspapers [...]