"Journalism has a glass jaw these days, threatening to shatter
into a million pieces with the next right hook that lands courtesy
of another layoff, another closing of a daily newspaper, another
inane, biased utterance from a cable news host. But journalism
could have landed its own body blows this week by showing it can
handle the jump to hyperspace and the digital future.
"The punches missed their mark, thanks to the actions of those
who handed out the Pulitzer Prizes and those who staged the annual
National Association of Broadcasters/Radio-Television News
Directors Association convention in Las Vegas.
"Last December, the Pulitzer board announced that for the first
time, online-only media outlets would have a chance to compete for
journalism's top prize. When the awards were announced on Monday,
however, no award was given to Web-only news. It's true that online
efforts that were part of print journalism outlets were indeed
pointed out -- and in one notable case singled out -- but enough
voices at both traditional media and in the blogosphere were asking
"why not?" to merit discussion here." (Perhaps this explains the lousy quality of most tech
reporting-- the old guard of the industry obsess over a medium--
ink and paper-- rather than content-- ed.)
