Pulitzers

The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. Read all about the winners here.

Last year, Reason did a brief interview with The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, who won the prize for general nonfiction for her excellent history of the Soviet prison-camp system, Gulag. Our Q&A is online here.

The Pulitzers have an infamously complicated relationship with coverage of the Soviet Union, especially re: Walter Duranty's Stalin-era reports for which he was awarded a prize in 1932. Read about that here.

Comments

[Amy Phillips]

Shannon: That may well be true, but there are plenty of actual gulags left in the world too. China and North Korea both have forced labor camps and have histories of starving and mistreating minorities. They also torture political prisoners and use inmates as medical test subjects, just like the Nazis did. The phenomenon of locking up enemies of the state and either brainwashing them or working them to death isn't going away any time soon, unfortunately.

[Ice Stalin]

Nobody cares about da commies in da 'hood.

[Fran]

There was a time when the Pulitzer's wouldn't give a prize if nothing was worthy. They should return to that fine tradition and save themselves lots of future embarrassment.

[Stan]

No prize was awarded Monday in the feature category.

[Critic]

I found this quote from the Pulitzer review board interesting:

The review of Mr. Duranty's work did find that his 1931 work, "measured by today's standards, falls seriously short..."

Have journalistic standards at the NYT changed so much in 70 years? Are they appreciably better now? Or does their refusal to relinquish Duranty's prize betray an inherent sympathy with the left?

[Shannon Love]

""I?m not writing this so it won?t happen again; I?m writing because it will.""

Unfortunately, Applebaum is right but I think the Gulags of the 21st century will come in a different form. My money is on political Environmentalist killing millions in the undeveloped world by denying them life saving technologies and economic development. The political and psychological parallels between contemporary Environmental and anti-globalization movements and the Communist of the 20's and 30's are quite disturbing.

[Dink]

From the same article:

Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. ...said he respected and commended the Pulitzer Board's decision.
"All of us at The Times are fully aware of the many defects in Walter Duranty's journalism. ...We regret his lapses and we join the Pulitzer Board in extending sympathy to those who suffered in the famine."

Cheeky bastard!

[JC]

Why am I not impressed?

[Will Spencer]

Once a year or so a POW will escape from a North Korean labor camp.

Yes, I said POW.

These are South Koreans who have been doing slave labor (often mining by hand) since the KOREAN WAR.

I wasn't even alive when these guys entered the North Korean slave labor camps.