Doom and Gloom Opining Wins WashPo Columnist a Pulitzer Prize

Photo of Jeff Poor.
By Jeff Poor (Bio | Archive)
April 7, 2008 - 18:30 ET

Congratulations to The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein - being on the "economy is destined for calamity" bandwagon early. It has won you a Pulitzer Prize.

Pearlstein was named as one of the recipients of the 2008 Pulitzer Prizes, for his columns on the nation's economic problems. Granted, Pearlstein called the fundamental problems with some of the shenanigans going on in the home mortgage early. But, he hasn't stopped there.

If you keep banging the downbeat economy drum, you'll be rewarded. According to the Pulitzer Prize citation for his award, Pearlstein was awarded the most coveted award in print journalism for "his insightful columns that explore the nation's complex economic ills with masterful clarity."

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

The Washington Post's Web site listed the columns they submitted to the Pulitzer Board. These "insightful" columns included the following:

Moral to this story - catch the economic doom and gloom media wave at the right time and you can ride it to Pulitzer glory.

In February, Pearlstein wrote he was hoping for a collapse:

"So I hope you'll forgive me, dear readers, when I say that the best thing that could happen to our economy is for a dozen high-profile hedge funds to collapse; for investment banking to enter a long, deep freeze; for a major bank to fail; and for the price of a typical Park Avenue duplex to fall by 30 percent. For only then might we finally stop genuflecting before the altar of unregulated financial markets and insist that Wall Street serve the interest of Main Street, rather than the other way around."

With that, Pearlstein said he was having difficulty silencing the voice inside of his head "repeating that old '60s expression, ‘Burn, baby, burn.'"

It's that sort of insight that has taken him to the top of the journalism world.

Photo credit: Pulitzer Web site


Comments Policy

All comments are owned by whoever posted them and are subject to our terms of use. They should not be assumed to represent the views of NewsBusters.

Viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Stuck in Sixty

April 7, 2008 - 20:08 ET by acumen

"repeating that old '60s expression, ‘Burn, baby, burn.'"

Or as Pulitzer Special Citation winner Bob Dylan once forecasted, A hard rain's a-gonna fall.

This Is "Business" Journalism?

April 7, 2008 - 22:24 ET by zeestephen

As an active trader I spend my day immersed in the financial press.

Shockingly, the "burn, baby, burn" perspective has always been the rule and not the exception.

Politically, at least half the world's business reporters are ardent supporters of unions, heavy taxation and regulation, and government intervention at the first sign of a problem.

At best, 20% are Conservative and have a basic understanding of free enterprise and calculated risks.

The bottom 30% are either incompetent or just echo chambers for the conventional wisdom.  

I read this differently

April 8, 2008 - 10:10 ET by c5then

I read this award not so much as recognizing someone who jumped on the bandwaggon early, but an award to someone who was instrumental in bringing about the very conditions that he wrote about before they actually had arrived. This is an award for not reporting the news, but for actually creating it.

It is a testament to how years and years of doomsday predictions, gloomy outlooks and negative journalism can actually help cause the conditions being written about.

 

The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Alan Keyes '08.