Urbanities
"The Columbia Spectator"
The Latest Pulitzer Prize-Giver
Answers From...
January 28, 2004
Kathleen Carroll, the executive editor of the Associated Press, was recently appointed to the committee that selects the Pulitzer Prize. Carroll has had a long career in journalism. She began at the Dallas Morning News, where she worked until 1978, when she joined the Associated Press. At the AP, she has held positions in cities throughout the country, including Dallas, Los Angeles, and, finally, Washington. She has also worked for the International Herald Tribune and Knight Ridder. The Pulitzer Prizes, the most prestigious in print journalism, are presented annually at Columbia, and are named after famed newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer, who endowed Columbia's Journalism School.
Congratulations on your selection to the Pulitzer Board. Pulitzers can make a journalist's career: the board has a lot of power, doesn't it?
Well, I guess in that context, it does.
In recent history, do you think Pulitzers have been awarded to deserving journalists?
Yes.
What traits do you look for in reporting and writing that make it award-worthy?
Well, I'm looking for useful ideas, clearly expressed and powerfully written. I'm looking to learn something I didn't already know. I want to feel like, when I have spent my time reading pieces, that I've spent my time wisely. I want to be moved, elated, saddened.
You now serve as executive editor at the Associated Press. What does the executive editor do?
I'm responsible for the news standard, for all the photos, the text of the AP, for making sure that we have the people and the practices to put across the best and most aggressive news coverage for customers around the world.
You've held a number of different jobs, at the AP and at other places. Which has been your favorite?
This is absolutely the greatest job in journalism, with all due respect to other people in journalism who say they have the best job. This a special opportunity. It's hard to imagine anything more exhilarating than this. That said, I've had some terrific jobs--there hasn't been a stinker in the bunch.
Why is your job at the Associated Press the best in journalism?
There's always an exhilarating story going on, and often, because of our job, we find those. Several of the most dedicated journalists on the planet work for the Associated Press. It's such a challenge, trying to find and tell the right story for audiences that are changing radically, having to find new ways to reach young readers, new ways to reach readers in India and in Thailand and in Germany. We have five languages that we publish in.
Is the job of an Associated Press journalist different at all from the job of a journalist who works at a daily paper?
It's less different than it used to be--the Internet has changed that. Most newspaper reporters are working to reach a geographically defined audience that is local, though not always. Often they see their product every day. Often they know where their story will be, even what page it will be on, when they leave the office. They used to have only one deadline to meet. Now, though, newspaper Web sites are asking stories to be filed earlier than they used to. AP journalists always file as soon as they know something--minutes, seconds matter to us.
How do you keep up the quality of writing under such time constraints?
You hire good people and you give them great training.
There was a piece in The New Yorker last week about the Bush administration's treatment of the media. What do you make of the administration's claims that the national media is a "filter" that does not represent what the public thinks?
Well, without responding specifically to what the Bush administration said, I can respond to the idea that the AP is a filter. We're pretty straight-ahead--our goal is to be essential, focused on news, a straightforward recitation of facts with an explanation of why those facts are important and why they matter. I don't know what we would be a filter for.
Vastly more people get their news from the AP than from any other news source there is. That is a responsibility we take quite seriously. We give them smart, informative, clear news. We don't have an agenda except to inform.
Maybe more so than ever, journalists are subjected to a lot of criticism, especially from Internet blogs about political coverage. Some of these are run by experts, like the Columbia Journalism Review's new blog, and others by partisans, like the blog devoted to criticizing The New York Times' coverage of Howard Dean's campaign.
[Laughing] It's not just New York Times reporters who are being criticized; AP reporters have taken their fair share.
I guess nobody is immune. Can journalists be criticized too much?
Oh, I think that everyone feels like they can be criticized too much. Journalism is, by its very nature, out in the course of public debate, and what the Internet has done has made more people news editors. News judgements are subjective by their very nature. If I choose to put an Iraq story ahead of a Medicare story on any given day, I've made a choice that is subjective.
There is a mistake in thinking that there is a right choice, and everyone else is wrong. The mistake is for news organizations to feel that way, and the AP doesn't feel that way. We're able to take criticism of our judgments perfectly fine.
In the past couple months, major papers seemed to run many more stories that were critical of Howard Dean, who was then the front-runner, then of any other candidate, and some say negative press was a big reason Dean didn't do as well as had been expected in Iowa. Was the press unfairly singling out Dean, or should the front-runner expect that sort of treatment?
The process of choosing people to run for president is one that demands a high level of scrutiny. Readers want to know what that person is about. Dean himself has said that that sort of scrutiny is one of the prices of being the front-runner. Dean has also been governor of a small and wonderful state--I travel there frequently--and the scrutiny that he underwent as governor of Vermont is not going to be the same as that for the highest office of the United States: president. So, I think that the criticism is ... perfectly legitimate.
--Interview by Matthew Carhart |
