April 24, 2019 Iowa Newspaper Association Volume 36 Issue 16 www.INAnews.com Judging the Pulitzers: CALENDAR of EVENTS WEBINARS READING IN AWE Selling Response BY ART CULLEN gripping. I hadn’t read them Thursday, May 9 STORM LAKE TIMES all. When the jury gathered, a computer ranking system MEETINGS was used. As jurors ranked the INA, INF & INA Services acing strong headwinds, American newspapers stories they read, that called Co. Boards published great journalism last year as attention of other jurors to Friday, April 26 reflected in the 2019 Pulitzer Prizes. read them. The field quickly FThe awards in the arts and letters were got knocked down over a day announced Monday at Columbia University in Art Cullen to a dozen or so entries that New York. could be digested by everyone. I was honored to judge the Public Service We were tasked with trimming the field to category, one of 22 in journalism, drama, criticism, three. As I read more of the entries, The Washington poetry, fiction, non-fiction and music. We were Post’s jumped out at me. It was an all-out news and a jury of seven professional journalists including editorial campaign seeking justice for the murder editors of the New Yorker, the Dallas Morning of Post opinion journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside News, the Arizona Republic, ESPN investigations, the Saudi Embassy in Turkey. Khashoggi entered the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times and The the embassy for documents related to his imminent Storm Lake Times. marriage. His fiancée never saw him again. Inside, The others gathered at Columbia. I was stuck a Saudi hit team sent by the crown prince awaited at the Omaha airport, where my flight eventually him. The journalist was cut up into pieces and was cancelled following a blizzard. The Super 8 burned in an oven for the crime of reporting on was lovely. I drove home over ice past Odebolt the Saudi royal family. The Post called out lobbyists and joined my peers over the phone to discuss who took Saudi money. It shamed the Trump our findings. Administration for cozying up to the corrupt We each had been tasked with reading roughly regime over arms sales. It found out from US and a third of the 65 entries in the category ahead of Turkish intelligence agencies how the patriot was the judging. Immediately I landed on a series from murdered. To this day, The Post’s moral outrage the South Bend Tribune in my batch about police continues for justice, and for the truth about our abuse. The newspaper obtained a video of police bankrupt relationship with the Saudis. beating a black man in an interrogation room at ProPublica rose to the top for obtaining a Elkhart, Ind., witnessed by the chief. The result tape of agents holding refugee children at a border was a series that documented abuse and cronyism, detention facility and making fun of them. It and exposed wrongful convictions of three men on provoked a national outrage of the cruelty of phony murder raps. The series cleaned out the police the border policy and its inhumane detention chief, the mayor, and the police supervisory staff system that separated infants from their mothers. while rousting the police commission. One officer Children remain separated whose parents cannot involved committed suicide. Dolores commented be identified. that I was invoking the name of the Lord every 15 The South Florida Sun-Sentinel won the minutes while reading the entry. So many other entries were just as good and READING IN AWE - cont. on page 3 The Iowa Newspaper Association’s mission is to advocate the continued importance of thriving newspaper enterprises in Iowa dedicated to the First Amendment and to provide guidance to members and direction to the association’s two related boards. 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Becky Maxwell, Centerville Daily Iowegian 641-856-6336 LEGAL HOTLINE ANNUAL RATES [email protected] Iowa Newspaper Foundation Daily Papers Discount Mark Rhoades, Missouri Valley Times-News Circulation Rate 2nd Newspaper....... 20% 712-642-2791 0-5,000 ......................... $575 3rd Newspaper ...... 30% [email protected] 5,001-10,500 ................. $975 U.S. MAIL 10,501-20,000 ............ $1,500 Iowa Newspaper Association 20,001 and up ........... $2,000 319 East 5th St. Des Moines, IA 50309 Weekly Papers Circulation Rate INA LEGAL HOTLINE 0-2,000 ......................... $275 515-283-3100 (paid service) 2,001-4,000.................... $415 4,000 and up ................. $575 2 | IOWA NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION BULLETIN READING IN AWE - cont. from page 1 The state of journalism is challenged to its boots by Public Service award for its exhaustive coverage of how sweeping economic changes to the news industry, and the sheriff’s office failed to respond to the Parkland by direct threats from government. So it was heartening High School shooting. The Sun-Sentinel took on the to see that everything great about American journalism local judicial system, school system and other officials was reflected again this year. over public records demands that would document how The entries I read were from newspapers sticking up deputies retreated from an active shooter rather than for the people against indifferent, malicious or corrupt attacking, and how school systems broke down or just government. Newspapers are not the enemy of children didn’t respond in an emergency. The Sun-Sentinel put in Yemen — US bombs dropped by Saudis are. Because together a graphic timeline based on dispatcher calls, of The New York Times and The Washington Post, interviews with eye-witnesses, police accounts and Congress voted to stop funding that war. The Elkhart other records that itself deserved some sort of Pulitzer. It City Hall got cleaned up thanks to the South Bend showed where the shooter moved and how the responding Tribune. Women got their say in Minnesota because deputies retreated or hid by the minute. of the StarTribune. The people of Parkland got answers Other newspapers that were in the discussion were from the Sun-Sentinel. And Jamal Khashoggi didn’t get the Philadelphia Inquirer for exposing how inner-city justice, but at least he got the truth from his friends at schools were loaded with friable asbestos, lead pipes and The Washington Post. other dangers to children. The Minneapolis StarTribune Art Cullen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, editor of The produced a stunning effort on how rape cases did not Storm Lake Times (a family-run weekly newspaper in small-town get prosecuted because of systemic problems, including Iowa), and author of the new book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle emotional interviews with many victims. The New York of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper. Times’ reporting on Yemen and on climate change was Follow him on Twitter at @cullen_art. extraordinary, especially for its photo play. It is hard to describe how good so many of the This column was originally published in the Storm Lake Times. entries were. When it came down to the final three, it’s Read the column online by visiting http://www.stormlake.com/ articles/2019/04/17/judging-pulitzers-reading-awe.