That Story That We Don't Talk About Gets a Pulitzer

Choire Sicha — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:20:38 +0000

The story that we do not mention under any circumstances has won a Pulitzer Prize-Gene Weingarten's second in three years. (So he had a so-so '09, so sue him!)

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'Hooray' For Workplace Violence!

Choire Sicha — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:40:46 +0000

The wonderful Gene Weingarten weighs in on the recent fisticuffs at the Washington Post style desk. (In case you hadn't heard, an editor and a reporter came to blows over a story.) He gives it a "hooray"-that people still care enough to brawl. He's right-just think about the end of Giant, when the dinosaur daddy of the family starts brawling with a racist on behalf of ill-treated Mexicans. Yes! "Newsrooms used to be places filled with interesting eccentrics driven by unreasonable passions-a situation thought of as 'creative tension' and often encouraged by management in eras when profits were high and arrogance was seen not as a flaw but a perquisite of being smart and right. Sadly, over the years newsrooms have come to resemble insurance offices peopled by the blanched and the pinched and the beetle-browed; lately, with layoffs thought to be on the horizon, everyone also behaves extra nicely to please the boss. In the face of potential ruin, journalists have been forced to reach accommodations with themselves: New strictures, new styles, new protocols, new limitations on what is possible are now meekly swallowed. In the frantic scramble for new 'revenue streams,' ethical boundaries are more likely to be pushed than is the proverbial envelope. Some of all this has leached out into the product. We all feel it. You do, too."

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The Awl

That Story That We Don't Talk About Gets a Pulitzer

'Hooray' For Workplace Violence!