Washington Post gets six Pulitzers, yet Dylan the big surprise

By Jeffrey Mitchell

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 3/7/08 – Times have finally changed at the staid Pulitzer Awards as Bob Dylan became the first real folk/rocker/poet to receive Pulitzer’s coveted nod. An honor that musicians from Tom Petty to Julian Lennon told Hollywood Today was well-deserved and overdue. There are few music artists in history that have been as influential to generations of musicians and fans.

John Lennon’s son Julian Lennon said “They walked and spoke together as musical giants and great friends. My dad was probably Dylan’s greatest fan although he hated to admit it.”

Tom Petty told us “To even begin to name the songs in Bob Dylan’s amazing catalogue would take too long and would be like reading from the encyclopedia.” Petty worked with Dylan in the Traveling Wilbury band.

Joan Baez is quoted as saying “Bobby just came along and blew everyone away, each day bringing forth material that was better than the day before and it just never stopped for years on end.”

Accordingly to Yoko Ono, Lennon’s song, “God,” was intended as a dialogue with Dylan. Lennon spoke of Dylan as changing his writing at a time when the Beatles where bigger than anything the music world had ever seen.

Dylan’s multi-generational career, recently covered in the award-winning film “I’m Not There,” where his 60s era was portrayed to such acclaim by Cate Blanchett (pictured with Dylan above) . It has lasted more than five decades. Dylan got his start in the late 50s but didn’t break as a major artist until the 60′s when he completely revolutionized what was then folk music by his sardonic and captivating lyrics filled with social commentary.

His move to electric guitar from the folk world was as controversial as it was simple. He changed with the eras like no other artist. The point of the film “I’m Not There,” is whenever you thought you had him pegged, he was somewhere else.

He would span the pop world with classics known to everyone young and old like “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “Positively 4^th Street” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” — while still reaching audiences with songs about the murder of Medgar Evars “Just a Pawn In the Game” or his “Hurricane” Carter racism protest song in 1975.

To this day, the enigmatic Dylan often remains a true touring musician, and plays halls and towns large and small. That is the highest praise we can say for a singer/songwriter – someone who just needs to play. No rock star, just still a working man, which he always championed.

Dylan was cited by Pulitzer committee in a quote that reflected his awesome power in the music and socio political world by saying “Bob Dylan, “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

Bob Dylan was one of the few popular musicians that John Lennon could consider a peer, and John was still alive when Dylan went through the three albums of his born-again phase. John Lennon always spoke of how Dylan’s music changed the entire character of the Beatles writing and Dylan was often wrongly accused of being the first to “turn them on” to marijuana in the sixties.

With all respect, we record the rest of the Pulitzer Prizes and pray you don’t think we are giving them short shrift. It’s just that we didn’t get our first kiss or become politically aware to a newspaper story, but we did with Dylan songs.

The Washington Post won six Pulitzer Prizes today, including the public service medal for exposing shoddy treatment of America’s war wounded at Walter Reed hospital, and the breaking-news award for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre.

The New York Times as usual received two Pulitzers: one for investigative reporting, for stories on toxic ingredients in medicine and other products imported from China, and one for explanatory reporting, for examining the ethical issues surrounding DNA testing.

The Post’s other awards were for:

National reporting, for its exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney’s backstage influence;

— International reporting, for a series on how private security contractors in Iraq operate outside the laws governing U.S. forces;

— Feature writing, for Gene Weingarten’s story on world-class violinist Joshua Bell, who, in an experiment, played beautiful music in a subway station to gauge commuters’ reaction;

— Commentary, for Steven Pearlstein’s columns on the nation’s economic problems.

It was the biggest haul of Pulitzers in the Post’s history. Previously, the most Pulitzers won by the Post in a single year was four, in 2006. The record for the most Pulitzers in one year is seven, won by the Times in 2002, mostly for its coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The awards were announced at a time of great distress in the newspaper industry, with circulation plummeting and advertisers fleeing to the Internet. Many newspapers, the Post included, have announced buyouts, layoffs and cutbacks in coverage.

“Amid all the gloomy talk about journalism today, these are fine examples of high-quality journalism in all parts of the nation,” said Sig Gissler, administrator for the Pulitzers.

The Chicago Tribune also won in the investigative reporting category, for stories exposing faulty government regulation that resulted in recalls of car seats, toys and cribs.

The Pulitzer for local reporting went to David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for stories on how county employees’ pensions were padded.

Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily won in the editorial cartooning category.

Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe was honored in the criticism category for his observations on movies, photography and painting.

The prize for breaking news photography went to Adrees Latif of Reuters for his photograph of a Japanese videographer who was fatally wounded in a street protest in Myanmar.

Preston Gannaway of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire was honored in the feature photography category for a series of pictures chronicling a family coping with a parent’s terminal illness.