PULL it sir

I couldn't write a blog about the Pulitzer and not include this little gem my best friend and fellow journalist, Rachel Slajda, found last year on the Pulitzer Web site. Under the Frequently Asked Questions portion of the site is the query "How is 'Pulitzer' pronounced?" The answer: "PULL it sir." Makes me giggle every time.


Anyway, to get to the actual meat of this blog, I was poking around last year's winners when I realized that the Editorial Cartoonist Walt Handelsman of Newsday won not only for his editorial cartoons, but for his editorial animations. I don't know if a big deal got made of this last April when the 2007 awards were announced but I'd call this a pretty huge step for multimedia journalism.

The journ-world was stunned and split on opinion over the recent news of a Polk Award going to a blogger for the first time ever, but I guess the editorial animation thing somewhat slid under the radar. I'm sure it caused less of a hubbub because it was one of our own creating the work and not an evil blogger (even though Joshua Micah Marshall hasn't been expelled from the fold for calling himself a blogger because he does stellar work).

It will definitely be interesting to see how the Pulitzers play out this year. I'll be amazed if they don't recognize multimedia work in some new way.