A Roy Harris piece in The Washington Post today on the Pulitzer Prize and the future of journalism mentions an Investigative Fund collaboration with ProPublica and the New Orleans Times-Picayune — which began with A.C. Thompson’s Nation magazine probe into unprosecuted murders in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — as a successful example of the new trend toward “collaborations between news organizations and independent, privately funded groups.”
Harris chides the Pulitzers for having been as slow to recognize such collaborations as it was to recognize the advent of online journalism.t “After a Pulitzer nod,” he suggests, “these partnerships would be valued for both their cost-savings and their standard-setting results.” Hey, we wouldn’t turn one down!
Update, 4:30 p.m. — So it looks like Harris called it! A ProPublica/New York Times Magazinecollaboration won a Pulitzer: Sheri Fink’s engrossing, in-depth look at deaths at New Orleans’ Memorial Hospital during the days after Hurricane Katrina. Autopsy reports obtained by a Nation Institute lawsuit contributed to her reporting.