The legacy of Joseph Pulitzer: a School and Awards for Journalism

Tomorrow, Monday at three in the afternoon, this year’s Pulitzer Prizes will be announced. Sober ceremony held in room 301, the World Room of the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York.

Hall dominated by a large stained glass window illuminated 24 hours a day donated by former students of the school founded by the Hungarian Joseph Pulitzer, editor of The World. The stained glass window comes from the old newspaper building, then the tallest skyscraper in the world, built in 14 months, which commemorates the campaign to finance the works of the Statue of Liberty that the French working classes had paid for. The paper raised $250,000 contributed by 120,000 readers.

The window and a bust of Pulitzer at the entrance of the School are the only symbols that remember him in the academic headquarters of these awards. In front of the building there is a statue, but not in honor of Pulitzer but of Jefferson. A building that only in 2012 was renamed Pulitzer Hall.

Why did it take 100 years to engrave the name of the founding journalist of this school and awards in stone? Because, Pulitzer was a populist publisher, inventor of “yellow journalism”, competitor of William R. Hearst, Citizen Kane. Both became rich with tabloid newspapers that had million-dollar audiences.

In 1903 Pulitzer wrote his will and thought that a way to dignify his memory could be to endow the most famous school of journalism in the world and awards that bear his name. He left two million dollars (200 million today), of which $500,000 went to the Pulitzers.

Awards in 23 categories of journalism, literature and music. Fifteen for journalistic work; each one includes a diploma and $15,000, except for the “Pulitzer of the Pulitzers” which rewards not journalists but the medium that has distinguished itself for its “public service” and which is recognized with a 24-karat gold-plated silver medal. And since its inception, the prizes also include $7,500 “travel grants” for three students from the Columbia School of Journalism.

Despite the generosity of Pulitzer’s “last wishes,” they were not easy to implement. Until his death in 1911, the editor of The World had to fight against many enemies. The first door slammed was from Columbia College. So did Yale and Harvard. He finally convinced the new president of Columbia, the pragmatic Nicholas Murray Butler, who argued before his deans “If we have a school of Mines, why can’t we have one of Journalism?” And so it opened its doors in 1912 as a postgraduate center with a two-year master’s degree, and in 1917 they established the Pulitzer Prizes.

The prestige of these awards has a lot to do with rules that guarantee the independence of the Board of Directors of the awards. There are 18 members chaired by the president of the university, and among those this year include the director of The New Yorker, Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times, the president of the Poynter Institute and the dean of the Columbia school.

Applicants pay $75 for each piece submitted. The Council does not decide on the awards, but it does name the hundred professionals who form five-person juries who, after two days of deliberations, submit three nominations to the Council: one for winner and another two for finalists in each category. The Council examines the works and by majority ratifies the proposals, although it reserves the right to declare some prizes void.

Tomorrow the tradition that honors the memory of a Pulitzer who died in 1911 at the age of 64 while sailing on his Liberty sailboat off the coast of North Carolina will be repeated.

Nearly blind, he traveled with five secretaries who took turns reading aloud to him. He suffered angina pectoris and his body was transported on a special train to New York.

During his funeral, The Word building turned off its lights, the elevators stopped working, no one answered phone calls, and a silence that lasted five minutes sent his editor off. The cedar coffin was covered with lilacs and white orchids; Before sealing it, someone placed the last copy of the newspaper with the news of his death under Pulitzer’s arm.