At 3 p.m. EDT today, the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prize will be announced, so there’s no time like the present to bone up on our knowledge of this 94-year-old prestigious award.
We all know that having the prefix “Pulitzer Prize-winning” before one’s name is second to none (though perhaps on par with “Nobel Prize-winning,”) but if your big goal in life is to land this prestigious honor, here are some things to bear in mind.
1. Lobbying jurors won’t help. The names of the jurors are kept confidential to protect them from being lobbied by entrants. In past years, an established group of journalists who jokingly called themselves “the cabal,” according to Poynter, would extract the names of the winners from the judges, but for the past two years, the Pulitzer organization has been holding them to their written secrecy pledges.
2. The award won’t make you rich. Unlike the Nobel, which comes with a hefty monetary prize (about $1.4 million this year), the Pulitzer prize money won’t make anybody rich (the pay out is $10,000). However, there’s no question that the coveted prefix has translated into financial success down the line.
3. Only finalists are referred to as “nominees.” This year, Oscar made room for five more Best Picture nominees, allowing even more filmmakers to attach “Academy Award-nominated” to their list of accolades, but don’t look to the Pulitzer organization for vanity titles. Only two runners-up in each category will get to say they were Pulitzer-Prize nominated. For the record, there are 14 awards in the journalism category, seven in the “letters” category and one music award.
4. No fancy celebration. Since 1984, Pulitzer winners have received their prizes from the president of Columbia University at a modest luncheon in May in the rotunda of the Low Library in the presence of family members, professional associates, board members and the faculty of the School of Journalism. The Pulitzer organization has declined offers to transform the occasion into a television extravaganza.
5. Mediocrity is not rewarded. The board is not above leaving some categories “unawarded” if they believe that of the 1,000 or so entries, there is no clear winner. In 2008, for example, it gave no prize in Editorial Writing, and in 2004 left Feature Writing unawarded, suggesting that the board was seeking to improve the quality in those genres.
This year’s winners will be posted at 3 p.m. at http://www.pulitzer.org. Of course we’ll have the news for you right here, and we’ll be especially interested in the public service award.
Photo courtesy of the Pulitzer Prizes via Wikimedia Commons.