Saturday 11 August 2012

U.S. Newspapers Ranked By Pulitzer Prizes

I was googling a list of newspapers by Pulitzer Prizes won and surprisingly I couldn't find any. The closest I found was an article on answers.com, so I decided to make my own since I have alot of free time in the summer. This is based on the information from the Pulitzer Prize's official website. I hope this can be used as a rough gauge of quality. All newspapers are not created equal if you are looking for information that's as objective, detailed, and well written as possible.

I included all the wins and finalist nominations in the table to make it more accurate. After all, getting nominated for a Pulitzer is pretty outstanding already. It turned out to make little difference. This is from 2008 to 2012, so 5 years. I was originally going to do 10 years but I got tired. Why not the entire history? Well it doesn't make much sense to compare a newspaper 30 years ago with the newspaper of the same name today, it has changed alot. In fact even 10 years ago may be a big difference and 5 years may in fact be a better choice because it's after the change in ownership of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, and of course, the impact of The Internet which put all newspapers into financial troubles and forced them to lay off editorial staff.


Name
Won
Finalist
Total
New York Times
12
20
32
Washington Post
11
10
21
Chicago Tribune
2
9
11
Los Angeles Times
3
8
11
Wall Street Journal
1
8
9
Associated Press [newswire]
1
6
7
Plain Dealer
0
5
5
Philadelphia Inquirer
1
4
5
Tampa Bay Times
1
4
5
Boston Globe
3
2
5
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
3
2
5
Dallas Morning News
1
3
4
Denver Post
3
1
4
Bloomberg News [newswire]
0
3
3
St.Louis Post-Dispatch
0
3
3
Miami Herald
1
2
3
Politico.com
1
2
3
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
1
2
3
Star-Ledger
1
2
3
ProPublica.org
2
1
3
Wisconsin State Journal
0
2
2
The Oregonian
0
2
2
Getty Images
0
2
2
Las Vegas Sun
1
1
2
Agence France-Press [newswire]
1
1
2
Thomson Reuters [newswire]
1
1
2
Detroit Free Press
1
1
2
Seattle Times
2
0
2

* I excluded all the organizations with only 1 nomination to keep the list shorter and more relevant.

To no one's surprise The New York Times came first. The list up to AP confirmed what I've heard from journalists about the other quality U.S. newspapers. The one thing which surprised me was that the Wall Street Journal was at the bottom of that group since many people consider it to be 2nd or 3rd in quality in the U.S.

There are 4 cases where a newspaper received more awards than nominations, so kudos to them!

If anyone needs the original Excel file for research or a school project or something you can email me and I'll probably send you it.

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