Positively Naperville will never win a Pulitzer Prize
Though this commentary always appears at the beginning of PN, it’s the last thing we tweak before sending our files to the web press for printing. This month with many uncharted happenings changing by the hour, sometimes by the minute, we admittedly have left several versions of our opining for another time, hoping to remain as accurate and appropriate as possible for the entire month.
Considering that the months preceding June 2020 have created a remarkable time to be in the media business, we searched to see how other newspapers have found what’s fit to print.
And that took us back in history to October 1896 shortly after Adolph S. Ochs had assumed ownership of the New York Times, then reported to be the “quality newspaper” in the region when “yellow journalism” reigned at the turn of the century.
As the story goes, Ochs rented Manhattan’s first electronically-lighted billboard space, a large display featuring white, blue, green and red lightbulbs on the high side of the 7-story Cumberland Hotel, located at 175 Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. Ochs’ intention was to advertise his newspaper. (Note, the Cumberland later was demolished to make way for the landmark Flatiron Building that still stands.)
The brightly illuminated and colorful billboard also aimed to discredit the two dominant newspapers in the New York market at the end of the 19th century. One was owned by well-known Hungarian-born publisher Joseph Pulitzer who later left an endowment for the Pulitzer Prize, and the other was California-born publisher William Randolph Hearst who built the nation’s largest newspaper chain.
Both Pulitzer’s New York World and Hearst’s New York Journal were known for their colorful front pages, sensational headlines, crime coverage and scandalous human-interest stories that promoted so-called yellow journalism.
Readers in this digital age likely refer to those types of attention grabbers as “clickbait,” “buzzfeed” or “fake news.”
The mention of Pulitzer reminded us that over the years more than a few readers have told your PN publisher that this publication would never win a Pulitzer Prize. The thought of winning that award established in 1917 that recognized achievements in U.S. newspaper publishing — and now includes magazine, online journalism, literature or musical composition — had never been our aim, so we’ve always greeted the comment with a smile and a chuckle.
And so it goes when simply trying to present a preview of the good things happening to better a community, a city of nearly 150,000 residents that welcomes everyone to take part in creating a place that cares for its citizens’ unmet needs with acceptance and understanding.
We’ll try to keep up. And we’ll continue to opine online.
Just remember to wash your hands often, keep 6’ social distance, stay home when you’re sick, cover coughs and sneezes, but don’t wash away your common sense.
