How to Win a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism
Welcome to Introduction to Winning a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism.
Course description:
This four-part lesson plan is designed as a crash course to provide a basic understanding of what it takes to win a Pulitzer for journalistic work. You can expect to learn where and what you should study in college, as well as which publications you should work for in order to maximize your chances of earning a medal.
Required Texts:
- The Pulitzer Prize Plan of Award — 2018 edition (older editions cannot be used)
- The biography of Joseph Pulitzer, whose “lapse into ‘yellow journalism’ was outweighed by his public service achievements.”
Recommended Preparation:
- Mastery of the correct pronunciation of Pulitzer — PULL it sir
Instructional Method:
For the purpose of this course, we’ll focus on the trends of the past decade of awards (2009–2018), and exclusively on named winners, not including prizes awarded to entire newsrooms or publications. You can find the full list of collected data here. We’ll also hear from a couple of Pulitzer Prize winners themselves on their thoughts about educational preparation.
Lesson 1: Choose your college wisely
Since 1917, Columbia University in New York City has annually administered the Pulitzer Prize to honor great achievements in journalism. But could you have guessed that the very same university has earned more Pulitzers than any other?
Since ’09, a total of 152 individuals have been named and given a personal bio and mugshot posted to the official Pulitzer website. Fifteen of those have been graduates of Columbia University. In other words, about 10 percent.
But wait, Columbia is only one of eight private universities included in the elite group of Ivy League schools. If we total all the Ivy alums with recent Pulitzers, there are 32. There would be 35, but three winners were multi-Ivy graduates (thanks, C.J. Chivers, Alissa J. Rubin and Holland Cotter). That’s 21 percent.
That still leaves 120 recipients, though. So where did they all study?
This heat map shows the most popular university locations in the U.S. for the past decade’s winners.
Or for a more interactive look, this map breaks it down by state.
Alternatively, a handful of winners graduated from universities outside of the U.S., including a 2018 International Reporting winner, Manuel Magato, who believes universities play a great role in shaping skilled journalists.
Magato is a 1983 graduate of the University of the City of Manila in the Philippines with an undergraduate degree in mass communications.
“In my country, most journalists come from three to five good universities, including state universities and Catholic-run schools,” Mogato said. “Value formation to strengthen journalism ethics as well as excellent training provided by practicing journalists doing part-time teaching jobs helps a lot.”
Lesson 2: Subjects worth studying
Knowing where to apply is the first step, but knowing what to study is perhaps even more important when it comes to preparing for the prize.
The past 10 years worth of winners have majored in everything from computer science to Indian Buddhist art, but upon evaluation, there are noticeable trends of college specializations. Not surprisingly, journalism was the most popular major among the prize-holders, with 34 grads claiming the major (22 percent).
But you don’t have to major in journalism to break into news writing. Two-time Pulitzer recipient Michael LaForgia specialized in English while at the University of South Carolina and got his start in journalism by writing for the school newspaper.
“I didn’t study journalism and so I had no access to a network of alums who could help me get an interview or even an internship at papers I wanted to work for,” LaForgia said. “But the student newspaper gave me clips, let me make mistakes in a relatively low-stakes environment, and generally learn the very basics…”
That experience led LaForgia to an internship at a small paper, which led to a larger one, which then helped him land a job as a stringer and eventually a full-time reporter.
“For me, all of it was built on top of working at the student newspaper,” he said.
LaForgia is one of 11 recent winners with an emphasis in English or literature, making it the second-most common major of the group. In third place was photography and/or visual media or film studies, a specialization chosen by 10 individuals whom swept up the awards in the categories of breaking news and feature photography.
Here’s a visualization of the top eight major choices of the winners:
Lesson 3: Where to work
Now that you know what your best options are for majors and minors, let’s think past college and pick which publications to send your resumes to.
We all know the Gray Lady is at the top, but to what degree? Well, a look at our list of winners will show us that The New York Times was the place of publication for 25 individuals’ journalism Pulitzers in the last 10 years. That’s about 16 percent, and a large margin ahead of the second-most awarded newspaper, The Washington Post.
This is a snapshot of all the winners’ employers, with a link below to access the interactive table.
Lesson 4: Understanding the odds
Last but not least, you should know that statistically speaking, your gender effects your chances at winning a Pulitzer. In fact, far beyond every other measure we’ve analyzed thus far, the strongest sign of Pulitzer material is the Y chromosome.
A whopping 70 percent of Prizes in the last 10 years were given to men.
Finally, if you’re looking for an extra boost, consider getting a name change. David is the top forename, with eighth winners by the title. Among female Prize-winners, there was a three-way tie between Kathleen, Lisa and Mary. Here’s a word cloud to help you find your favorite:
Recommended texts:
