Big Deal!

Well bust my buttons, there's big doings on the Journalism front today;

POLITICO named to Pulitzer Board

Columbia University announced Monday that POLITICO Executive Editor Jim VandeHei has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

VandeHei , who co-founded POLITICO in early 2007, becomes the first member of the Pulitzer Board from a primarily online news outlet. The print edition of POLITICO is distributed daily in Washington when Congress is in session.

They get the nod, primarily, for being at the forefront of "new media."

New Media?

Let's see ... A bunch of former newspaper guys go out and launch a website, then, essentially, milk their former contacts for gossip and, Presto-Chango, it's "New Media"

From Greg Sargent;

As I’ve noted before, there are two Politicos. There’s the good Politico, which offers big-picture, reported pieces that genuinely change the conversation, and boasts bloggers who break news, offer regular insights, and use Web-based journalistic techniques better than other “non-ideological” outlets do. The not-so-good Politico feshitizes Drudge and lunges for the catty gossip that will reverberate inside the Beltway bubble, and unabashedly sees these things as virtues.

The question is whether Politico’s Web-journalism techniques, in and of themselves, are really that innovative. Their main innovation seems like it consists in marrying widely-used Web-based techniques with self-styled “non-ideological” journalism. In an ironic twist, the very fact that Politico strives so hard for a non-ideological posture is probably why they’ve been selected as the first online news org to grace the Pulitzer board.

One thing, for sure, Politico's Mike Allen is in for a big payday, and may need a U-Haul next awards date, for he surely will dominate the Pulitzer categories of "Sucking-Up To The PartyofNoicans" and "Sucking-Off Matt Sludge" ...

Hands down.


Bonus Links

Julie Weiner: Person Responsible For The POLITICO Will Decide The Best Writing And Reporting, Now

Mike Allen Forgets To Add Himself To The List

The Politico's DNA ... The Other Iraq ... And He's a Bible-Thumper Now ... Around The Garlic Patch