Pulitzer celebration at Las Vegas Sun

I have been saying for 10 years that traditional media (generally speaking) put their collective heads in the sand and didn’t embrace new media which, if they had, it might have saved many of them from the current economic demise we are witnessing.  BUT, I am also cognizant of a great value that traditional media, especially newspapers, continue to champion as the investigative arm of journalism. And this week, there’s more proof. Pulitzer Prizes  were awarded and the New York Times won 5 top medals, The Las Vegas Sun won for Public Service for a story described as courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon, a young reporter who exposed construction deaths along the ’strip’ that led to tighter safety laws.  And some of the other winners, included some smaller newspapers, the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, AZ  and The Post-Star, in Glens Falls, NY. If you have a minute, read what that little Glens Falls, NY community paper wrote about winning the Pulitzer!  Television News reporters, producers and photographers still do their share in this category despite what you may see on a majority of news programs daily today. For those who know the work and yes, courage, that goes into these efforts – congratulations! And for those who don’t necessarily know, you should hope that we can preserve these strong initiatives and investigative journalism in some way. My hope is that this will survive the newspaper downturn and with help in the monetization of digtial media, become the leading force in the ‘new’ new media. Otherwise, who will tell these stories?