Pulitzer Prize Lifts the "CultureGrrl Exclusion Rule"

The Pulitzer Board: Adminstrator Sig Gissler, front row, third from right

Devoted art-lings, you may remember that when I rashly entered CultureGrrl in the Pulitzer Prize competition for work done in 2008, I got tossed out at "hello." For the first time this year, blogs were considered as potentially Pulitzer-worthy, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

But when I entered my series that exposed the stealth deaccessions at the National Academy and reported on the subsequent fallout (which ultimately did win me a Best Blog award from the Newswomen's Club of New York), I was felled by this eligibility requirement:

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.

Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzers, sent me a note explaining that I was disqualified because "the ArtsJournal site is largely devoted to aggregating news produced by other entities and to commentary and reviews in various forms."

Not true, I argued, because ArtsJournal has a robust blogging component with original content (including mine). The only concession I got was the unorthodox refund of my application fee.

But now comes the payoff in today's press release from Gissler:

A year ago, the [Pulitzer] Board broadened the competition to include many United States news outlets that publish only on the Internet at least weekly, but it required that all entered material---whether online or in print---had to come from entities "primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing events."

The Pulitzer Board decided to eliminate that entry requirement at its November meeting at Columbia University.

The requirement sometimes excluded possibly promising entries---notably by online columnists, critics and bloggers [emphasis added] because of the nature of their Web affiliation, according to Sig Gissler, administrator of the Prizes.

"The revised rule will provide more flexibility as we focus on the merit of an entry rather than the mission of the Web site where it appeared," Gissler said.

So the pernicious (and unfairly applied) rule that kept me out of contention (not that I would have won) has been overthrown. Can I get a do-over?

I doubt it. So now I have to think whether any of my cultural punditry this year might rise to Pulitzer level. My most persistent campaign of 2009 was my quixotic tilting at the MoMA Monster, but all I have to show for that (and I can't even take credit) is a token 200-foot shortening of the overreaching Nouvel tower next to a museum that purports to be concerned with good urban design but seems to feel compelled to get involved in facilitating construction of incongruously tall buildings on its block every time it feels the need to expand its own galleries.

Wait a minute! Can I get a Pulitzer for my successful effort to change the rules for the Pulitzer?