The Joseph Pulitzer Prize has been awarded every year since 1917 to recognize artistic and journalistic excellence. The award is the high-point for journalism, a worldwide recognition of the effort and time that writers have placed into their craft. I have dreamt of earning one for myself since I first wanted to be a sports journalist at age nine.
I suppose it is only fitting that Joseph Pulitzer was one of the original “yellow” journalists: writers and editors that sacrificed truth in reporting and fact-checking for ratings and viewership. Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst’s part in the Spanish-American War is one of the lowest moments in the history of journalism.
My other dream was to become a writer for ESPN. In the same way that the Pulitzer Prize stands for a dark history alongside Pulitzer’s other accomplishments, my desire vanished some time ago. Too many times I have seen the front page of the world’s leading sports website covered with sensationalistic headlines and misleading by-lines. Actual news about the sports world pushed to the back pages in favor of fluff pieces regarding whoever is in the spotlight in that moment.
Why is actual sports news, like player movement and transactions, pushed exclusively to team pages, while the fourth story in six days about LeBron James giving an opinion on something topical is front and center on Page One?
Why is every second of Johnny Manziel at camp worth 23-minutes of a 60-minute episode of SportsCenter, while the NFL player movement that actually determines the fate of a team during the season forced to a minor sideline?
When did ESPN become the sports-related TMZ? When did page views and competition with other sites remove the need for proper fact-checking and meaningful reports?
I stopped dreaming of being a writer for ESPN about a year ago. All I wanted was to be a box score writer. Recapping games played, simply telling in a totally objective fashion what is important to understand what occurred on the field. There is no room for subjective writing in box score recaps.
It is not a glamorous role, a box score writer will never win a Pulitzer Prize. However, it is truth. Nothing I can write and nothing I can say will change what occurred on the field. The box score in black and white in the fact-checker, confirming me when I speak the truth and calling me out if I lie. There is no slant, no spin, no battle of left versus right, Republican versus Democrat, rich versus poor. It might well be one of the last bastions of completely objectively true journalism left in this world.
At the end of the day, the truth in the text will always mean more than how many people read the text. It is the job of journalism to report the facts, and let the public shape their own opinion far away from the paper. The truth is the ultimate job of journalism, a job left by the wayside in the name of page views and money.
I will never win a Pulitzer for what I think of as writing the truth. Given the history of the person behind the prize, and how we have not learned from the past, that is perfectly fine with me.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
