Columnist Eugene Robinson wins Pulitzer
By HOWARD KURTZ, The Washington Post Tuesday, April 21, 20097 comment(s) | Default | Large
Washington Post columnist and Orangeburg native Eugene Robinson on Monday captured the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his writing about the campaign that led to Barack Obama’s election.
In reacting the award, Robinson said he did not wrestle with being a black journalist covering a black presidential candidate because “the great thing about a column is that you have a license to feel,” and “I tried to allow myself to go with those feelings at times when it was appropriate. ... ”
“Race is certainly a part of the story of my growing up, coming up in journalism. I did not think it was a factor in how I evaluated the politics of the moment at any given time.”
Robinson, who called his parents on election night from an MSNBC set to rejoice in Obama’s victory, said such a thing was unimaginable in the late 1960s, when he was one of the few black students at the recently integrated high school in Orangeburg. A few teachers there, he said, were “overt, nasty racists” who “humiliated black students.”
He started his op-ed column four years ago, at age 50, after a quarter-century at The Post that included stints as city editor, foreign correspondent, foreign editor and assistant managing editor for Style. Robinson said that “people return my phone calls a little faster” since he became a prominent commentator on MSNBC.
The New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including one for uncovering the prostitution scandal that forced Eliot L. Spitzer to resign as New York governor, while
Scandal played a role in a number of awards, including the local reporting prize to the Detroit Free Press for disclosing the steamy text messages to an aide that led to the resignation and jailing of the city’s married mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick.
Smaller newspapers fared better than in previous years, with the Las Vegas Sun winning the public service award for reports on the high death rate among construction workers on the gambling capital’s Strip. The East Valley Tribune of Mesa, Ariz., shared the local reporting prize for examining how one sheriff’s focus on immigration enforcement jeopardized other investigations. Florida’s The St. Petersburg Times won two awards, one for national reporting for fact-checking competing claims during the presidential campaign, the other for Lane DeGregory’s feature writing on the adoption of a neglected girl who could not speak.
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jackiedash wrote on Apr 29, 2009 8:37 PM:
GOATLOCKER wrote on Apr 24, 2009 9:46 AM:
I sure hope you are not taking advantage of all the freedoms that us "warmongering Mercenaries" have provided for you over the last 233 years. Please stop using your "freedom of speech" to write to a newspaper which has the "freedom of the press" to publish your's and Communist Bob Dylan's incendary, and totally unsubstantiated opinions. "
2ndGenerationBulldog wrote on Apr 21, 2009 4:53 PM:
confisus_sum wrote on Apr 21, 2009 4:13 PM:
superfluousm wrote on Apr 21, 2009 1:55 PM:
These so called "independent military analysts" who appeared on CNN, MSNBC, FOX NEWS, etc were revealed to be nothing but propagandists for the Pentagon and weapons makers and profiteers. The so called independent analysts profited from the war by various paid gigs including lobbying for those who sold and made billions of dollars from production of those things that Bob Dylan told us were made by the "Masters of War" the tools and weapons of war. Dylan eloquently stated disgust for these monsters in some of the lyrics below.
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.
The song was written in 1963 and still rings loud and clear today and the war mongers are occasionally exposed, as they were by David Barstow.
And I tip my hat to Mr. Robinson, whose column I regularly read online in the Washington Post. I can't say I see him on the television because we don't watch it anymore as get all our news from the reality based community, selected liberal sites on the internet as well as the NY Times and to a lesser extent, the Washington Post. And occasionally tune in to CSPAN on the net, which is pretty much the only TV show we care to see. "
ANNUAL wrote on Apr 21, 2009 1:06 PM:
WHAT!! ok Mr. extreme left wing please put the pipe down and come back to reality. "
msh22 wrote on Apr 21, 2009 1:42 AM: