Nick Denton Rides to the Rescue!

The milk spilled during yesterday’s big Pulitzer announcements has barely dried, the celebratory cookie crumbs have scarcely been swept up by some migrant worker, and already, the newspaper industry’s contact high has vanished. That’s because we’re still all gonna die. And not only are newspapers disintegrating before our very eyes, but the act of committing original, important journalism is furthering papers’ downfall. So says the savior of all media, Nick Denton.

And if you buy that argument, we’ve got a hot virtual-slave labor gig you should totally check out.

Denton, in a post that certainly appears to have topped his self-imposed 200-word target, ripped the awards as “self-congratulating” and “symptomatic of the decline of the newspaper industry.”

[N]ewspapers’ Pulitzer-chasing is most damaging because it distracts newspapers from their real challenge. Rather than impress colleagues with the seriousness of their reporting, US newspapers need to engage a readership that is drifting off to television and the internet. Pulitzer-winning journalism will win Pulitzers; it won’t save an industry which is experiencing double-digit annual declines in advertising revenue.

What’s more, the steaming douche-tard holds up British dailies, which “[lack] much of the worthy reporting that wins Pulitzers,” as objects for emulation. His advice: Regain readership by producing less newsworthy news.

This is the opposite of what needs to happen, obviously. Papers don’t win, or chase, Pulitzers entirely for the sake of editors’ egos. Instead, the awards recognize the type of reporting that papers have to do more of, not less, to survive – aggressive, unique, enterprising investigations and commentary that have broad social and political ramifications. They reinforce the newspaper as being more than a (failing) business, but also public good. And they’re a reminder that, every once in a while, there’s more to life than web stats and bargain-basement scat.