At precisely 3 o’clock last Monday afternoon I was trying to get a Web site to pull up on my office computer.

The screen kept telling me that a connection to the pulitzer.org site could not be established. At other times, the site would half-heartedly appear and come out looking like I had time-traveled back to 1994.

What was I doing? I was trying to see who had just won Pulitzer prizes—especially if the National Enquirer had won a prize for its investigative stories on former senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards.

Yes, that’s right. The famed tabloid that once featured stories on UFOs was up for a Pulitzer prize. Wait… what am I saying? They still publish stories about UFOs—a quick Google search finds one from 2009.

It amazes me that they entered a story for consideration. It amazes me even more that they nearly didn’t.

From the Los Angeles Times: “When I talked to a disappointed National Enquirer Editor Barry Levine on Tuesday, he said he wouldn’t have ever thought of entering the paper’s work if not for the urging of a columnist and blogger, Emily Miller. “Before that,” Levine said, “I had mostly thought we were the rebels who would never be taken seriously.””

As it turned out, that esteemed prize went to a New York Times Magazine and ProPublica collaboration about a hospital’s decisions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The LA Times  interviewed Melanie Sill, chairwoman of the jury which sent three finalists to the Pulitzer board, after the awards were announced. Sill said the jury didn’t take into account the Enquirer’s tabloid image. “There was nothing about politics or peripheral issues… There was just discussion about the merits of each entry. And there were a lot of really great ones.”

I have to admit that I was glad the National Enquirer didn’t win. But unlike some other journalists who have voiced their opinion on this matter, it’s not because it was the National Enquirer, a lowly tabloid not fit to compete with the serious journalists.

If your story is well-written, thoroughly and accurately reported and makes a difference, why shouldn’t it be eligible for a Pulitzer prize? I have no problem with letting any newspaper, tabloid or metropolitan daily, entering for consideration.

Rather, I wouldn’t classify the affair and love child between Edwards and Rielle Hunter as newsworthy. Edwards didn’t sleep with a hooker and pay for it with campaign funds. He didn’t stiff Hunter child support payments. Basically the stories were about a private affair that really didn’t affect taxpayers at all.

To me, the story just seems like sensationalized gossip. It’s the classic definition of yellow journalism.

I’ll admit there is some inherent newsworthiness if it turns out that Edwards’ friends used campaign money to support Hunter. But the National Enquirer didn’t prove that it was campaign money that was used. A grand jury is investigating the matter.

That isn’t to say that the Enquirer doesn’t deserve credit for their hard work. It took two years of investigating to get the story. It took two years for Edwards to confess. They did outstanding work, not considering the subject matter.

I admire the Pulitzer jury for considering the story just like every other submission they received. It’s great that in this new media age, more and more news outlets, however different, are able to prove that thorough and accurate reporting can be done.

Should it have won the investigative reporting prize? No. I believe investigative reporting should concern something that would benefit the public at large. The New York Times Magaazine article, for instance, showed that in times of crisis terrible things can happen. It also showed that we need to take preventative steps to ensure that no one else is ever involved in a similar incident.

However I do think the Enquirer should get some award for Edwards’ New York Times bio. Without the Enquirer, there would not be this:

“In the current investigation resulting from Mr. Edwards’s affair, prosecutors are said to be considering a complicated and novel legal issue: whether payments to a candidate’s mistress to ensure her silence (and thus maintain the candidate’s viability) should be considered campaign donations and thus whether they should be reported.”

Anything that hilarious deserves a prize.
 

Meredith Shamburger is a junior journalism major. She can be reached for comment at
[email protected].