Dan Gillmor on the Pulitzer Prizes:
It’s nearly inconceivable that a blogger or even a group of bloggers, lacking the resources of a major news organization (including First Amendment lawyers), would have produced any of these projects.
It’s inconceiveable only because it hasn’t happened — yet.
Unlike Dan, I think it’s entirely possible that bloggers could produce Pulitzer-quality work.
For the sake of argument, let’s say a dozen people do most of the work on a project that earns a Pulitzer. Couldn’t 12 bloggers who had a fanatical devotion to a topic collaborate to report, edit and write a package of stories good enough to win a Pulitzer?
What would stand in their way? Lack of reporting skills? They could pick those up along the way, and pick the brains of working journalists in areas where they’re stuck.
Geographical distance? If their homes were scattered across the country, most locales would be within a day’s drive.
Lack of money? Heck, if they can afford PCs and high-speed Internet, let’s assume they’ve got disposable income.
Lack of legal expertise? Most likely they could get an attorney to do some pro bono work for them.
I wonder if the open-source software model could be adapted to create a kind of collaborative public journalism reported via weblogs. Seems entirely possible.
Dan’s correct that large institutions have a huge leg up in resources they can throw at a story, but time, money and warm bodies do not win Pulitzers. Talent, ambition and determination do win Pulitzers, and those things are just as plentiful outside our newspapers.
Journalists on the payroll of large news organs have another huge advantage over everybody else: access to the powerful. No CEO or police chief is going to take your calls if you say, “I’m Joe Blow and I’m reporting for my blog.”
But blogging is a ground-up medium — all sorts of regular folks who’d never speak to a reporter might well talk to a blogger.
I’d love to see some bloggers take Dan’s doubts as a challenge — I’m sure he’d love to be proved wrong.
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