Hooray!

We've heard plenty about the fading away of the newspaper and the print magazine.  Many have gone under, others operate with pitifully few reporters, and even the biggest and strongest have cut their bureaus and foreign staff severely, resulting in terrible news coverage of much of the world, which apparently now includes Puerto Rico.  The hurricane aftermath coverage has been scandalous.

Thanks largely to the Internet, few get paid to report and write.  That's the bottom line for the journalism profession.  When you can't make a living doing it, it mostly doesn't get done.

Nevertheless--the press is not all gone.  Newspapers exist and reporters do good work.  The Pulitzer Prizes celebrate some of this, and this year's include the usual prizes for the big guys, the New York Times and the Washington Post, that are well-deserved, at least partly due to the fact that they can still pay people.

But there are other organizations that got prizes.  Some of them are national and international (the Reuter's news service, USA Today working with the Arizona Republic newspaper), New York Magazine and the New Yorker.  But also the most endangered species, the city newspaper.

So special congratulations to the Press Democrat (Santa Rosa), the Cincinnati Enquirer (pictured above, getting the news of their staff win), the Alabama Media Group, the Des Moines Register editorial writer, and the Daily Progress in Charlottesville.

And a big shout-out to the one and only freelance reporter to win: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, writing for GQ.  Share the joy!  Here's the New York Times list of all the winners, including the non-press prizes.