E&P: VT paper should be considered for Pulitzer

Steve Safran April 23rd, 2007

Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher makes an interesting argument:

The folks at the Pulitzer Prize office say they don’t recall a college newspaper ever winning the coveted awards. Well come next spring, that may need to change. Given everything the student-run Collegiate Times of Virginia Tech has accomplished in the past week, from online scoops to poignant, thoughtful print presentations, the daily paper may deserve some consideration, even if a special category is required.

We pointed to the Collegiate Times early in the crisis, and their work was remarkable. They went into blog mode when the shootings first happened, and broke news on their site. They published profiles of the victims, ran continuous eyewitness accounts, and kept their community informed with important and timely information written for them, by them. The Collegiate Times had multimedia pages reporting on the tragedy. And Strupp points out that the New York Times and the Richmond Times-Dispatch linked to the Collegiate Times as its only source for a list of the students who were murdered. If the Collegiate Times were a “professional newspaper,” you’d have to think a Pulitzer would be in the bag. I hope the board can see that these students accomplished a major and landmark act of journalism.