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Comment by mcherm | Hacker News Reader

Much of the credit goes to The Cincinnati Enquirer for having the ethics to include interns on the byline. As they should, but not everyone would do so.

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This is exactly it. This was clearly a team effort. Like 60 people won the same Pulitzer. But it's quite clear that even as an intern, this individual's contributions were very important.

I love team awards.

Team awards don’t seem to exist for the advertising industry even tho its a team effort to do the work to win them.

That’s a shame spreading the credit helps build loyalty which keeps those award winning teams in place.

To play devil's advocate, an intern with a Pulitzer (or similarly prestigious award) on their resume is going to have a lot of job opportunities.

You’d be surprised how dire the situation is in most newsrooms, and how petty the competition is.

If your head hasn’t been in the ground for the last twenty years you should have an idea on how bad the business is.

Here is a recent article about the situation if indeed your head is below ground: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-news-041...

I found this comment fairly condescending and presumptuous. Not everyone has the time and ability to follow everything. That doesn't mean their "head is below the ground." Twenty years ago, I was an infant.

Its not just newsrooms. Many teams allow internal politiking to take precedence over working together. As a result, they're at war with themselves _and_ trying to compete in the market for customers.

As you might imagine, teams which do not have this conflict have substantially more time to focus on their customers.

An intern whose work won the Pulitzer but wasn't listed on the byline is probably not going to want to work for you again, for fear of that happening again. It goes both ways.

Unfortunately it's accepted in the industry not to get bilines while you're an internet or a new guy, so I'm sure interns don't have any expectations because of this culture.

> an internet

I realise it's probably auto correct, yet that's still so out of http://n-gate.com :)

A hackernews doesn't follow the Prime Directive

.. bows head, humbly.

Which is exactly why you’re going to attract better intern candidates.

The Clio Awards do (source: I won one as part of the Media Lab team at Bleacher Report).

They credit the team but specifically name the individual members as well.

The Clios are pretty big as industry awards go.

Peggy worked on Glo-Coat, but only Don won the Clio.

I’m assuming they got better since the fictional 60s ;)

Yes, She had the idea to create the database out of unstructured paper arrest slips which gave coverage and statistical credibility to the effort. Key in the entire operation.

Exactly this. She deserves the attention she's getting. And she did the grunt work daily, which is important to call out. Reminds me of the ChicagoCrime.org feet-on-street data wrangling story. A great idea and the persistence to follow through.

Not to mention visiting the county jail each morning, when most interns would just be out getting Starbucks.

> when most interns would just be out getting Starbucks.

On the contrary, most interns I know wouldn't be doing this because of how overworked they are doing the grunt work.

Agreed. New Zealand’s semi national paper prints unattributed reddit comments on a regular basis. It’s grim.

Da fuck? What am I spending all that time on reddit for then?

But seriously, I am actually an award winning writer (and it's not even my profession, it's just a hobby) and I do comment on reddit a lot... they're stealing comments without attribution? Ethics aside, that's just terrible journalism to say the least.

> Da fuck? What am I spending all that time on reddit for then?

Whenever I see youtube clips on evening news, my thought is the exact opposite - why am I bothering to watch this, when I can just head over to YouTube and catch it without a pair of talking heads doing their own version of a Reaction Video about it?

I got quoted in international business times, which struck me as funny.

http://www.ibtimes.com/hackers-warn-about-future-threats-how...

That comment was from Reddit.

I'm sure that sense of ethic will pay for itself for years to come. They will get the best students applying for internships.

Honestly why should they? The Interns did exactly what they were told, the went and jotted down details. Is that Pulitzer Prize worthy work? Does the helper who whipes Einstein’s blackboard during the break deserve partial credit for what he put on it?

I get that it’s a fun story but it honestly just seems redicules.

Had you actually read the article, you would have seen that:

> From there, she took it upon herself to create a database for Enquirer reporters, documenting the time, location, and nature of every opioid-related arrest that occured over those days.

The article also says that because of that database they were able to fill gaps in the article and make it as compelling as it was.

She seems worthy of being added to the byline, but I don't think its right for you to be so dismissive of OP's point.

GP wrote a statement that sounds like "interns should be added to the byline for pulitzer prizes." The way its written sounds like a general statement. In reality, I'm not sure this is a reasonable expectation (as in, the word "should" seems inappropriate.)

We should consider what makes someones work Pullitzer prize worthy. I'd speculate (because I don't know much about journalism) that it really comes down to doing outstanding work, more than is usually expected of any individual, and for succeeding on metrics that are hard to succeed on.

This intern did something valuable, adding things to the database, and probably coming up with the idea for the database herself, but does this meet the criteria of being truly standout, incredible work?

The nature of this particular award that it was given to the entire staff who contributed substantially to the coverage, seems like she is thus worthy, but I don't think treating OP like they're being ridiculous is reasonable. This is a worthwhile question. I think a lot of people on this site are familiar with awards being given to people who don't seem to deserve it, so investigating this topic, for a case that resembles that pattern, doesn't seem so offensive or outrageous as you've kind of termed it.

I agree that it's something to be discussed, but OP was quite disparaging with his comparison to somebody cleaning a chalkboard. Providing the interns participate in the investigation, as they did in this case, they should be included in any award given to the team that wrote the piece.

It was a series of articles and she was key to the story. It was a team award, so all authors who got a byline were included.

The OP compared her work to someone “wiping down Einstein’s blackboard”. The dismissal of that comment was entirely warranted.

It's an interesting award. Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for denying the holodomor, and he was awarded a Pulitzer for his work, a Pulitzer that the Times has yet to address.

The reality that Duranty denied was comparable to the holocaust. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people died and the Times apologized for it.

God, that's awful. They said that they won't withdraw it because he didn't deliberately attempt to deceive anyone... that is their standard?

https://www.nytco.com/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pu...

> Does the helper who whipes Einstein’s blackboard during the break deserve partial credit for what he put on it?

If the helper knows what to wipe off and what to leave up for when Einstein comes back, then I'd say yes. That's a more fitting analogy in this case.

Yeah, the helper who wipes Einstein's blackboard should get some credit as well. Today's researchers can't do research properly (in France) because they spend most of their time doing admin and manual stuff since the government decided all those jobs were useless. Looking down on those that work in the shadows isn't surprising but still. That's why a guy from CNRS rejected the bonus he was offered for getting a EU research grant as he considered it was unfair for the rest of the lab workers who played an important part in him getting the grant.

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