This Won't Be Their Year

Jim, our long-time Pulitzer Prize correspondent, is on the beat again this year and, according to this preview, it looks like the Star Tribune is once again conspicuously absent from the list of nominees:

Editor and Publisher has come up with a list of this year's Pulitzer Prize finalists
in 8 of 14 categories.[Now updated to ten of fourteen] Yep, no nominees from the Strib. As your Strib/Pulitzer correspondent I felt I should report on this, even though the official post taunting the Strib won't come out until the Pulitzers are officially announced in April.

For a few years now, Fraters Libertas has been following the Star Tribune's futile effort to add another Pulitzer Prize to their trophy case to go with their very lonely 1990 award. It has got to be just grating on the Strib editors (those still remaining, anyway) to watch much smaller papers like the Rutland (VT) Herald, Grand Forks (ND) Herald, Great Falls (MT) Tribune, Santa Rosa (CA) Democrat, and the Albuquerque Journal equal or surpass their Pulitzer count. Especially when you consider that the primary prerequisites for a Pulitzer seem to be extreme leftism and reasonable competence (and we all know that the Strib isn't deficient in the extreme leftism department). Thus, every spring the Strib must hope against hope that this will be the year the Pulitzer jury throws them a bone.

Well, better luck next year.

Editor and Publisher has compiled a list (leaked from sources on the judging panel) of this year's Pulitzer finalists in eight of the fourteen journalism categories. Veteran Strib/Pulitzer watchers will not be shocked to learn that none of the finalists are from the Star Tribune.

The good news for the Strib is that most of this year's nominees are from papers that are well ahead of them on the Pulitzer tote board. The Birmingham News does have a shot at winning their second Pulitzer and surging past the Strib, but they are a long shot to beat out the Wall Street Journal in the Public Service category (the Journal is a finalist for their work on exposing the backdated stock options scandal, which occurred largely in the Strib's own backyard).

But, all hope is not lost. There are still six categories that have not been leaked. Unfortunately, "Best Editorial Plagiarized From The New Yorker" is not one of them.