Blog Slogger: Pulitzer Prize for Online Content (ArtsJournal excluded)

I'll admit it was a low-percentage play.

When I told you I was applying for an award that I wasn't going to get, I wasn't kidding:

It was the Pulitzer Prize.

I decided to take a flyer because, for the first time in its history, the Pulitzer opened its doors this year to mere bloggers. That's right, fellow pajama journalists, you too might have won the gold (above), had you applied by Feb. 1. Better luck next year.

Be forewarned, though, that there are a few sticky technicalities before you get inside that open door. The New Eligibility Rules state:

Eligibility was expanded to encompass online sites that regularly engage in original reporting---using such techniques as interviewing, going out to observe things, reviewing public records, taking photos and videos---and publish the journalistic results of those efforts. Sites and publications are not eligible if their content consists primarily of commentary on news events that have been covered by another organization, of if they simply aggregate news coverage done by others.

Gee, I thought, ArtsJournal Blogs meet these criteria! AJ aggregates on the left side, but original reporting and commentary by distinguished cultural journalists and critics happen all day (and in my and Terry Teachout's cases, all night) on the right side of the homepage.

Wrong.

In an e-mail today from Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzers, I was informed:

We do not find the requirements to have been met. The ArtsJournal site is largely devoted to aggregating news produced by other entities and to commentary and reviews in various forms.

I'm not sure what's wrong with commentary and reviews, since the Pulitzers have categories for Explanatory Reporting, Criticism and Commentary. As for "aggregating," do they plan to exclude the Huffington Post because it, too, provides abundant links to mainstream news sources, along with original content? They're trying to get with the new-media 21st century, but I'm not sure they're there yet.

No matter. Although I never really expected to win, I lost them at "hello." Bigwig Sig sympathetically confided that "other online entries are also being rejected, usually because the sites lack primary devotion to original reporting." It was not just me. Now I feel much better.

If misery loves company, I'll huddle with another sore loser, Colbert (and I think there are a few CultureGrrl readers who believe I should definitely have entered the Westminster Dog Show):