This year marks the 100th awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes. Today the Pulitzer Prize is one of the most famous and the most prestigious award in journalism, photojournalism, music, literature and performing arts. It was approved by Joseph Pulitzer, who was a well-known American publisher and journalist, whose name is still associated with the emergence of the “yellow press”.
Parts of Pulitzer Prize
August 7, 1903, Joseph Pulitzer made a will in which charged after his death found a prize for journalists, writers and activists in the field of education. This day is considered the date of the establishment of the Pulitzer Prize, the amount of which is 10 thousand dollars. Over the years, it awarded writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Saul White, Margaret Mitchell, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and others.
Pulitzer Prize was financed from the investment fund, created after the death of the publisher. In 1970, another fund was created, which managed to attract additional donations for the payment of awards of this prestigious award.
In presenting the Pulitzer Prize highlights the nomination “For public service”. Nominees, except remuneration, awarded a gold medal and more. Award is given “for exceptional example of serving the public.”
The number of awards is increased over the years. In 1922, there was a prize for the best caricature. In 1942 it was added to the award for the best photo. Since 1943, the list of nominees added with music writers. Nomination “Journalistic investigation” was created in 1999. In 2006, it began to hold a competition among online content.
Prizes are awarded by Columbia University in New York for the presentation of the Pulitzer Committee. It consists of 19 experts -5 publishers, 6 editors, 6 scientists, including president of the university and dean of the Faculty of Journalism, a columnist and administrator of award.
There are 21 Pulitzer Prizes: one in music, six in literature, and 14 in journalism. The journalism prizes include awards for investigative reporting, editorial cartooning, breaking news photography, breaking news reporting, explanatory reporting, national reporting, criticism, international reporting, feature photography, editorial writing, commentary, local reporting, feature writing, and public service. Pulitzer Prize winning photographs in particular have often become extremely famous, chronicling important events in human history or portraying emotional scenes through the lens of a camera. In literature, Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in fiction, drama, poetry, history, biography, and general nonfiction.
Typically, newspapers nominate themselves for Pulitzer Prizes by submitting the relevant material along with an entry form. In order to qualify, the newspaper must be published in the United States at least once a week, but the journalist submitted for the prize need not be American. Competitors in the music and literature categories likewise submit their own entries, which include copies of the work that they are nominating.
The famous novels which was awarded
In 31 years under the “Novel” name, the prize was awarded 27 times; in its first 66 years to 2013 under the “Fiction” name, 59 times. No award has been given 11 times, including its first year 1917, and it has never been split. Three writers have won two prizes each in the Fiction category: Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and John Updike.
Moreover, Margaret Mitchell, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee and others famous American writes won this prize.
In 2015 the best book have became “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr.
The Russian winner
Only one Russian journalist Alexander Zemlianichenko has got the Pulitzer Prize. He was one of five AP photographers who won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for photos of the Soviet coup attempt of 1991. He also was a finalist in the 1995 Pulitzer competition for his photographs of the war in Chechnya, Russia.
Zemlianichenko received his second Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for a photo of Russian President Boris Yeltsin dancing at a rock concert. The same photo won a World Press Photo award in 1996.
The most impressive category
Photography is the most shocking part of Pulitzer Prize. Sometimes stories of nominees is so controversial or scaring. Some of the photographs honored with the Pulitzer Prize draw a wide response not only among the Pulitzer Prize Board but among the public at large too.
The most scandalous photography shows a small Sudanese girl who bent to the ground and dying of starvation. A hooded vulture waiting for his prey not far away. These is Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, took on a trip to Sudan in March, 1993. But with prestigious prize young photographer received also a great deal of reproaches.
As it was testified by photojournalists — Carter’s companions on that trip — after taking the picture, the photographer chased the vulture away, while the toddler managed to muster up her strength and go away. But the audience blamed Carter for not helping the girl, not saving her. With his soul bruised and bemauled, shocked by the famine situation and public reaction, of course, Kevin Carter committed suicide two months after receiving the Pulitzer Prize.
“Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths” — these are the words of American photojournalist Eddie Adams. They could be easily proved by the story captured by one of his own pictures.
In 1968 the Eddie Adams received the Pulitzer Prize for the photograph of two men — a prisoner in handcuffs and an officer shooting at his head. This photograph has changed attitude of the nation to the war in Vietnam once and for all and even played its part in its ending.
Unfortunately, when the picture was shown to the public for the first time it was not supplied with a signature. It turned out that the prisoner was a captain of Viet Cong’s so called “soldiers of revenge”, who had killed hundreds of unarmed civilians. When preceding events were clarified, the officer had already got the brand of a murderer, which ruined his life.
John Gaunt, journalist of the Los Angeles Times, wanted to go for a walk when he heard that something had happened on the shore, not far away from his home. He grabbed a camera and rushed to the beach. Beside an angry sea there was a couple, his neighbors, screaming and swinging their arms — only a few minutes earlier their year-old son had perished in the waves.
The next day the photo appeared in newspapers. Gaunt became a subject to criticism, but the Pulitzer Prize Board found this picture “poignant and profoundly moving”.
It could not be denied that out world changes — sometimes even too quickly — and we must fallow its example. Since 1917 the Pulitzer Prize has undergone a lot of changes. It lost some categories (for instance, National and International Telegraphic Reporting and received others. Nowadays it allows journalist to spread their works with the help of traditional media on one hand and throw the Internet on the other.
But nevertheless there are still some changes to be done. New technologies make us interesting in new media and new genres, which still are not mentioned among the categories of the Pulitzer Prize. Therewith scientific investigations of media play a huge role in life of modern journalism, they define its fate. That is why they should be also honored with a special category of the Pulitzer Prize of future.
