Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/04/25

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Subject: Re: [Leica] LEICA: ARE YOU LISTENING?
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 11:13:28 -0400

YuAt 04:46 PM 4/24/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Has somebody out there won a Pulitzer?  If so I am will be in complete 
>awe! If there are any Pulitzer prize winners on this group, please 
>send me your best pair of boots and I will have them nicely shined and 
>back to you in a short period of time!
>
>Dan 

Forget the boot offer, but the answer is "Yes," more than a half-dozen
nominations, a couple of finalists, and one win - for "General Reporting,"
NOT photography (closest I've ever come to that was a third-place for
sports photo of the year in the New England Newspaper Association
competition in 1966 :-) ), something I love but don't claim to be anywhere
near the league of a good number of the "amatures" on this list, and no
where near the universe of the "pros."

And Eric is absolutely right about the import of the "moment," or, in the
case of the writing prizes, circumstances or newspaper politics. Yes, skill
has something to do with it, but so does being in the right place at the
right time. So does being assigned to the right story or event at the right
time. So does the state of the national/journalistic conscience at a given
time and place. It is often as important not be be ahead of the curve in
terms of subject matter as it is not to be behind it.

And by the way, Congrats Chandos!...I am a firm believer that what counts
is being selected as a finalist, not winning. By the time you get the
finals a judgement has been made that you do work of a certain caliber,
which is what is important. The rest is all as explained above, which can
best be summed up as luck, karma, whatever.

* And for anyone who feels compelled to go look for my name at the Pulitzer
site or in the Almanac, don't waste your time. The Prize was officially
awarded to "Newsday, Long Island, a Team of Reporters." Again, politics.
However, if you're really anal, you can find it on the Newsday site where
the paper credits me and my co-conspirator, Kathleen Kerr, with having won.
We were the "team leaders, and wrote more than 80 percent of the submitted
material. And, yes, 15 years later it's still more than a bit annoying that
the paper, which hadn't had a winner in close to a decade, chose to have
Columbia list it the way it did. :-)