Министерство образования и науки Украины
Таврический национальный университет
Им. В.И. Вернадского
Факультет иностранной филологии
Кафедра английской филологии
Гура Егор Николаевич
Реферат на тему: «The Pulitzer Prize»
Дисциплина «Лингвострановедение»
Специальность 7.030502
«английский и немецкий языки и литература»
курс 4, группа 42
Симферополь 2001
Contents:
History of the prizes
2
Joseph Pulitzer
5
The Administration of the Pulitzer Prizes
7
Appendix
12
The list of used resources
14
HISTORY OF THE PRIZES
In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the
very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born, an intense
indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper publishers,
a passionate crusader against dishonest government, a fierce, hawk-like
competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles,
and a visionary who richly endowed his profession. His innovative New York
World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer
was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university
level in a school of journalism. And certainly, the lasting influence of
the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and drama is to be
attributed to his visionary acumen. In writing his 1904 will, which made
provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to
excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in
letters and drama, one for education, and four traveling scholarships. In
letters, prizes were to go to an American novel, an original American play
performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, an
American biography, and a history of public service by the press. But,
sensitive to the dynamic progression of his society Pulitzer made provision
for broad changes in the system of awards. He established an overseer
advisory board and willed it "power in its discretion to suspend or to
change any subject or subjects, substituting, however, others in their
places, if in the judgment of the board such suspension, changes, or
substitutions shall be conducive to the public good or rendered advisable
by public necessities, or by reason of change of time." He also empowered
the board to withhold any award where entries fell below its standards of
excellence. The assignment of power to the board was such that it could
also overrule the recommendations for awards made by the juries
subsequently set up in each of the categories. Since the inception of the
prizes in 1917, the board, later renamed the Pulitzer Prize Board, has
increased the number of awards to 21 and introduced poetry, music, and
photography as subjects, while adhering to the spirit of the founder's will
and its intent.
The board typically exercised its broad discretion in 1997, the 150th
anniversary of Pulitzer's birth, in two fundamental respects. It took a
significant step in recognition of the growing importance of work being
done by newspapers in online journalism. Beginning with the 1999
competition, the board sanctioned the submission by newspapers of online
presentations as supplements to print exhibits in the Public Service
category. The board left open the distinct possibility of further
inclusions in the Pulitzer process of online journalism as the electronic
medium developed. The other major change was in music, a category that was
added to the Plan of Award for prizes in 1943. The prize always had gone to
composers of classical music. The definition and entry requirements of the
music category beginning with the 1998 competition were broadened to
attract a wider range of American music. In an indication of the trend
toward bringing mainstream music into the Pulitzer process, the 1997 prize
went to Wynton Marsalis's "Blood on the Fields," which has strong jazz
elements, the first such award. In music, the board also took tacit note of
the criticism leveled at its predecessors for failure to cite two of the
country's foremost jazz composers. It bestowed a Special Award on George
Gershwin marking the 1998 centennial celebration of his birth and Duke
Ellington on his 1999 centennial year.
Over the years the Pulitzer board has at times been targeted by critics for
awards made or not made. Controversies also have arisen over decisions made
by the board counter to the advice of juries. Given the subjective nature
of the award process, this was inevitable. The board has not been captive
to popular inclinations. Many, if not most, of the honored books have not
been on bestseller lists, and many of the winning plays have been staged
off-Broadway or in regional theaters. In journalism the major newspapers,
such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington
Post, have harvested many of the awards, but the board also has often
reached out to work done by small, little-known papers. The Public Service
award in 1995 went to The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. Thomas, for its
disclosure of the links between the region's rampant crime rate and
corruption in the local criminal justice system. In letters, the board has
grown less conservative over the years in matters of taste. In 1963 the
drama jury nominated Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but
the board found the script insufficiently "uplifting," a complaint that
related to arguments over sexual permissiveness and rough dialogue. In 1993
the prize went to Tony Kushner's "Angels in America: Millennium
Approaches," a play that dealt with problems of homosexuality and AIDS and
whose script was replete with obscenities. On the same debated issue of
taste, the board in 1941 denied the fiction prize to Ernest Hemingway's For
Whom the Bell Tolls, but gave him the award in 1953 for The Old Man and the
Sea, a lesser work. Notwithstanding these contretemps, from its earliest
days, the board has in general stood firmly by a policy of secrecy in its
deliberations and refusal to publicly debate or defend its decisions. The
challenges have not lessened the reputation of the Pulitzer Prizes as the
country's most prestigious awards and as the most sought-after accolades in
journalism, letters, and music. The Prizes are perceived as a major
incentive for high-quality journalism and have focused worldwide attention
on American achievements in letters and music.
The formal announcement of the prizes, made each April, states that the
awards are made by the president of Columbia University on the
recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize board. This formulation is derived
from the Pulitzer will, which established Columbia as the seat of the
administration of the prizes. Today, in fact, the independent board makes
all the decisions relative to the prizes. In his will Pulitzer bestowed an
endowment on Columbia of $2,000,000 for the establishment of a School of
Journalism, one-fourth of which was to be "applied to prizes or
scholarships for the encouragement of public, service, public morals,
American literature, and the advancement of education." In doing so, he
stated: "I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of
journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a
noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the
minds and morals of the people. I desire to assist in attracting to this
profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already
engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual
training." In his ascent to the summit of American journalism, Pulitzer
himself received little or no assistance. He prided himself on being a self-
made man, but it may have been his struggles as a young journalist that
imbued him with the desire to foster professional training.
JOSEPH PULITZER (1847–1911)
Joseph Pulitzer was born in Mako, Hungary on April 10, 1847, the son of a
wealthy grain merchant of Magyar-Jewish origin and a German mother who was
a devout Roman Catholic. His younger brother, Albert, was trained for the
priesthood but never attained it. The elder Pulitzer retired in Budapest
and Joseph grew up and was educated there in private schools and by tutors.
Restive at the age of seventeen, the gangling 6'2" youth decided to become
a soldier and tried in turn to enlist in the Austrian Army, Napoleon's
Foreign Legion for duty in Mexico, and the British Army for service in
India. He was rebuffed because of weak eyesight and frail health, which
were to plague him for the rest of his life. However, in Hamburg, Germany,
he encountered a bounty recruiter for the U.S. Union Army and contracted to
enlist as a substitute for a draftee, a procedure permitted under the Civil
War draft system. At Boston he jumped ship and, as the legend goes, swam to
shore, determined to keep the enlistment bounty for himself rather than
leave it to the agent. Pulitzer collected the bounty by enlisting for a
year in the Lincoln Cavalry, which suited him since there were many
Germans in the unit. He was fluent in German and French but spoke very
little English. Later, he worked his way to St. Louis. While doing odd jobs
there, such as muleteer, baggage handler, and waiter, he immersed himself
in the city's Mercantile Library, studying English and the law. His great
career opportunity came in a unique manner in the library's chess room.
Observing the game of two habitues, he astutely critiqued a move and the
players, impressed, engaged Pulitzer in conversation. The players were
editors of the leading German language daily, Westliche Post, and a job
offer followed. Four years later, in 1872, the young Pulitzer, who had
built a reputation as a tireless enterprising journalist, was offered a
controlling interest in the paper by the nearly bankrupt owners. At age 25,
Pulitzer became a publisher and there followed a series of shrewd business
deals from which he emerged in 1878 as the owner of the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, and a rising figure on the journalistic scene.
Earlier in the same year, he and Kate Davis, a socially prominent
Washingtonian woman, were married in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The
Hungarian immigrant youth - once a vagrant on the slum streets of St. Louis
and taunted as "Joey the Jew" - had been transformed. Now he was a American
citizen and as speaker, writer, and editor had mastered English
extraordinarily well. Elegantly dressed, wearing a handsome, reddish-brown
beard and pince-nez glasses, he mixed easily with the social elite of St.
Louis, enjoying dancing at fancy parties and horseback riding in the park.
This lifestyle was abandoned abruptly when he came into the ownership of
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. James Wyman Barrett, the last city editor of
The New York World, records in his biography Joseph Pulitzer and His World
how Pulitzer, in taking hold of the Post-Dispatch, "worked at his desk from
early morning until midnight or later, interesting himself in every detail
of the paper." Appealing to the public to accept that his paper was their
champion, Pulitzer splashed investigative articles and editorials assailing
government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers. This populist
appeal was effective, circulation mounted, and the paper prospered.
Pulitzer would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the
Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism
would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.
Pulitzer paid a price for his unsparingly rigorous work at his newspaper.
His health was undermined and, with his eyes failing, Pulitzer and his wife
set out in 1883 for New York to board a ship on a doctor-ordered European
vacation. Stubbornly, instead of boarding the steamer in New York, he met
with Jay Gould, the financier, and negotiated the purchase of The New York
World, which was in financial straits. Putting aside his serious health
concerns, Pulitzer immersed himself in its direction, bringing about what
Barrett describes as a "one-man revolution" in the editorial policy,
content, and format of The World. He employed some of the same techniques
that had built up the circulation of the Post-Dispatch. He crusaded against
public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of
sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations,
and staged news stunts. In one of the most successful promotions, The World
raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance
to the New York harbor so that the Statue of Liberty, which was stranded in
France awaiting shipment, could be emplaced.
The formula worked so well that in the next decade the circulation of The
World in all its editions climbed to more than 600,000, and it reigned as
the largest circulating newspaper in the country. But unexpectedly Pulitzer
himself became a victim of the battle for circulation when Charles Anderson
Dana, publisher of The Sun, frustrated by the success of The World launched
vicious personal attacks on him as "the Jew who had denied his race and
religion." The unrelenting campaign was designed to alienate New York's
Jewish community from The World. Pulitzer's health was fractured further
during this ordeal and in 1890, at the age of 43, he withdrew from the
editorship of The World and never returned to its newsroom. Virtually
blind, having in his severe depression succumbed also to an illness that
made him excruciatingly sensitive to noise, Pulitzer went abroad
frantically seeking cures. He failed to find them, and the next two decades
of his life he spent largely in soundproofed "vaults," as he referred to
them, aboard his yacht, Liberty, in the "Tower of Silence" at his vacation
retreat in Bar Harbor Maine, and at his New York mansion. During those
years, although he traveled very frequently, Pulitzer managed,
nevertheless, to maintain the closest editorial and business direction of
his newspapers. To ensure secrecy in his communications he relied on a code
that filled a book containing some 20,000 names and terms. During the years
1896 to 1898 Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with
William Randolph Hearst's Journal in which there were no apparent
restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news. When the Cubans
rebelled against Spanish rule, Pulitzer and Hearst sought to outdo each
other in whipping up outrage against the Spanish. Both called for war
against Spain after the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up and sank
in Havana harbor on February 16, 1898. Congress reacted to the outcry with
a war resolution. After the four-month war, Pulitzer withdrew from what had
become known as "yellow journalism." The World became more restrained and
served as the influential editorial voice on many issues of the Democratic
Party. In the view of historians, Pulitzer's lapse into "yellow journalism"
was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and
often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and
business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust
legislation and regulation of the insurance industry. In 1909, The World
exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the
French Panama Canal Company. The federal government lashed back at The
World by indicting Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore
Roosevelt and the banker J.P. Morgan, among others. Pulitzer refused to
retreat, and The World persisted in its investigation. When the courts
dismissed the indictments, Pulitzer was applauded for a crucial victory on
behalf of freedom of the press. In May 1904, writing in The North American
Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of
journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "Our Republic and its press will
rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with
trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve
that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a
mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a
people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic
will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."
In 1912, one year after Pulitzer's death aboard his yacht, the Columbia
School of Journalism was founded, and the first Pulitzer Prizes were
awarded in 1917 under the supervision of the advisory board to which he had
entrusted his mandate. Pulitzer envisioned an advisory board composed
principally of newspaper publishers. Others would include the president of
Columbia University and scholars, and "persons of distinction who are not
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