Scandal at the Pulitzers

The Pulitzer Prizes, administered annually by Columbia University, are the most famous prizes awarded to American journalists, authors, playwrights and others in the world of letters. A win can elevate an obscure book to bestseller status, turn a play into a Broadway hit or save a reporter during a round of layoffs. So prestigious is this honor, getting shortlisted as one of a given year’s three finalists can be leveraged into bigger paychecks and gaining new clients.

Shortly after each year’s application deadline in late January, Columbia invites several jurors in each category—subjects like Photography, Nonfiction Book, Opinion Writing, etc.—to its Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan, where the panels—chosen for their expertise in their respective fields—sift through piles of entries. Generally speaking, each subject panel selects three finalists. Each trio goes to the main Pulitzer board, which picks one winner—leaving the remaining two as runners-up. (Usually. There are exceptions, but let’s not voyage too deep into the weeds.)

The Pulitzers have been the subject of scrutiny since their founding more than a century ago. The ongoing crisis in journalism, which has left 74 percent of the profession unemployed since 2008, has left the few rats remaining in the cage more rabidly competitive than ever. Resentments abound. Being snubbed in favor of work a writer feels is inferior to theirs, or not believing their entry was given a fair shake, or suspecting that personal or political bias impacted the results, risks contributing to a toxic loss of faith in a system that picks winners and losers. And let’s not forget: these are journalists. They’re wired to root out the slightest soupçon of impropriety.

At a time when Americans’ trust in the news media is at a record low—only 8% trust journalists to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly”—the last thing we need is corruption in the institution that anoints the best of the best of the news, and that declares the examples other journalists ought to emulate.

While I have my opinions about other categories, Illustrated Reporting and Commentary (as of 2022, the successor category to Editorial Cartoons) is the category I care about and know the most about as a syndicated editorial cartoonist and former cartoon syndication corporate executive.

Editorial cartooning is a tiny profession (soon to be extinct, thanks to those never-ending budget cuts); I either know or am one person removed from everyone in the field.

I instantly smelled a rat when I read this year’s Illustrated Reporting and Commentary finalists. Among them is Peter Kuper, whose cartoons the Pulitzer website says are syndicated by PoliticalCartoons.com. (Disclosure: I have socialized with Peter, and he was my colleague at MAD magazine. Nice guy, and this story is only peripherally about him. There is no evidence that he did anything wrong here. Told you it was a small employment sector.)

A syndicate is a company that sells features like comics and puzzles to newspapers and other media outlets; it’s why you’ll find “Beetle Bailey” in scores of newspapers across the country.

The PoliticalCartoons.com syndicate is owned and run by cartoonist Daryl Cagle. (Disclosure: I have known Daryl for decades, and often been at odds with him about his business model. Like I said…) Daryl has a daughter, also a cartoonist but also an editor, Susie Cagle. (I know her too.) Susie was one of the five jurors on this year’s Illustrated Reporting and Commentary jury—the jury that selected Peter Kuper as a Pulitzer finalist.

Columbia is notoriously secretive about Pulitzer deliberations, and swears jurors to secrecy. Still, some rules are clear, especially those concerning conflicts of interest, which are widely known throughout journalism. If you or someone close to you might be favorably or unfavorably impacted by something you report—or a prize you judge—you must disclose that relationship, and probably bow out. What’s in your heart doesn’t matter. The mere appearance of conflict of interest is a conflict of interest.

“Throughout any part of the Pulitzer Prize process, if anyone reviewing material is involved with an organization or an immediate family member the group is examining, they must recuse themselves,” notes Poynter, the journalism research organization.

Did Susie Cagle recuse herself from this year’s judging? The question goes much deeper than Peter Kuper. Susie Cagle’s father Daryl syndicates dozens of cartoonists, many of whom submitted entries to this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. If any of them won or became a finalist—as did Kuper—Daryl Cagle could use that prize announcement to promote their work and potentially earn more money. Allowing a syndication boss’ nepo daughter to judge a Pulitzer category full of entries by syndicated cartoonists is like putting Ivanka Trump on the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. It’s a conflict of interest, and it’s best avoided by picking someone else as a juror.

Unfortunately, those involved refuse to answer.

I emailed Susie Cagle for comment for this piece. She did not reply. I emailed Ann Telnaes, a previous Pulitzer winner and fellow cartoonist who served as a juror this year alongside Susie. She did not reply. I emailed the Pulitzer Prize board at Columbia. Even though I’m a Columbia alum (GS, Class of ’91), they did not grant me the courtesy of a reply.

Refusal to answer a columnist colleague’s questions about the judging process is highly hypocritical. Institutions like Columbia J-School and cartoonists like Telnaes, who famously quit the Washington Post because she suspected anti-anti-Trump editorial bias, expect the President of the United States to hold press conferences and answer questions and be transparent, and rightly so. The same standards, however, do not seem to apply to them.

Between the prize administrators who announced their plans to discriminate against cis white men, and the broadening of my category to include vast numbers of graphic novelists, gag cartoonists and other artists, I don’t like the odds. So, as I have decided in other years recently, I didn’t apply this time.

I have been a finalist, in 1996. My syndication list expanded dramatically.

By Pulitzer perfidy standards, the possibility that a syndicate honcho’s daughter did her dad a favor by elevating a cartoonist on his list is not at the top of my list. That spot is reserved for my colleague who submitted his animated cartoons under a unique URL. When he checked, the number of views was zero. The Pulitzer jury didn’t even bother to open, much less look at, his work, before “rejecting” him. They did cash his $75 application fee, though.

There’s also the time the jury set aside all the edgier entries to look at later, but then forgot by the time the open bar became available. And the cartoonist who so drunk-bonded with an editor that, once on the jury, the editor made sure he won. Some winners have even proven to be plagiarists and fabulists.

Whatever the scale, this looks rotten. It necessarily makes me wonder: If the category I happen to know about has been corrupted, should we wonder about the other ones too?

Life is unfair and the Pulitzers are unfair. But life is only unfair because we don’t care enough to raise our voices. If you see something, you ought to say something, especially when it matters as much as journalism matters—or used to.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)