Upon his death in 1911, renowned American journalist and newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, bequeathed a fund for the creation of the Pulitzer Prizes to promote excellence in American journalism,literature, and drama. The first awards were presented in 1917. By 1999, The Pulitzer Prize Board was awarding more than 20 prizes in the following categories: journalism public service, breaking news reporting,investigative reporting, explanatory reporting, beat reporting, national reporting, international reporting, feature writing, commentary, criticism, editorial writing, editorial cartooning, spot news photography, feature photography, letters, drama, and music fiction, history, biography, poetry,general non‐fiction, music, special award. The Pulitzer Prizes Web site (http://www.pulitzer.org/) is the source of this list as well as other information about the Pulitzer Prize.
The Web site is divided into four components:
- 1
A page providing the history of the award, a 1,500 word biography of Joseph Pulitzer, and a detailed, fairly lengthy description of the administration of the awards, including some interesting information about the process itself.
- 2
A page listing the latest year’s winners and nominees in the various categories.
- 3
An archive of previous winners back to 1917. A nicely constructed timeline allows the user to click on a year and view a list of winners (but not nominees) for that year. Beginning in 1995, the archive provides much more detailed information about award winners. For example, you can click on an award winner and be taken to a page that allows you to actually read the news story or stories that were awarded a prize. In the case of photography, images are provided. Book award pages provide an image of the book jacket. Since 1995, short biographies of winners are also provided; and the names of jurors for that category are listed. The “Archive” section allows you to search the entire Pulitzer database by key word.
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A section titled “Resources” provides contact information for the Pulitzer organization (based at Columbia University). Here you will also find guidelines and rules (in pdf format) for submitting entries.
Overall, The Pulitzer Prizes Web site is an excellent model for how a site of this type should be constructed. The design is simple, yet visually appealing. Screens are uncluttered, and navigation is easy. Keyword searching is possible but often not necessary. The content is substantial, which, more than anything else, makes this site useful.
