2020.05.04为什么美国最好的新闻作品在年底发表？

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Why is America’s best journalism published at the end of the year?
Pulitzer prize-winning articles are more than twice as likely to come out in December as in any other month

May 4th 2020

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THE WINNERS of this year’s Pulitzer prizes, the most prestigious in American journalism, were announced on May 4th. Established more than a century ago by Joseph Pulitzer, a newspaper publisher, the awards are given for 15 categories of journalism—such as investigative reporting, feature writing and public service. There are also seven others, for letters, drama and music.

This year’s winners were not surprising: the New York Times won three; the New Yorker took home two. The timing of the stories was fairly predictable, too. Pulitzer-winning articles tend to cluster around the end of the year, near when submissions are due (the deadline was recently moved from December 31st to the fourth Friday in January). Between 2014 and 2018, nearly a quarter of winners and finalists—excluding breaking news, cartoons and photography—hit news-stands and home-pages in December. In 2019 18% were published in the last month of the year (see chart).


Journalism is not the only field in which this occurs. To be considered for Oscars, films must open on big screens by New Year’s Eve. Every year, a glut of hopeful contenders is released in December. The hope among film-makers is that their movies will be fresh in voters’ minds as they cast their ballots, a phenomenon known as “recency bias”. Sure enough, in recent years most of the films that have taken home the “big four” Academy Awards—best picture, director, actor and actress—were released in the fourth quarter of the year.

Are journalists, like film-makers, strategically timing their work? Perhaps. Alternatively, prizewinning publications might argue that they publish Pulitzer-worthy pieces all year round—and that their most recent projects, being the freshest, are just the likeliest to be submitted.



每日图表
为什么美国最好的新闻作品在年底发表？
普利策奖获奖文章在12月发表的可能性是其他任何月份的两倍以上

2020年5月4日


今年的普利策奖获奖者于5月4日公布，这是美国新闻界最负盛名的奖项。该奖项由报纸出版商约瑟夫-普利策在一个多世纪前设立，颁发给15个类别的新闻，如调查性报道、专题写作和公共服务。另外还有7个奖项，分别为文学、戏剧和音乐。

今年的获奖者并不令人惊讶：《纽约时报》赢得了三项；《纽约客》获得了两项。这些故事的出现时间也是相当可预测的。普利策奖获奖文章往往集中在年底，接近投稿时间（截止日期最近从12月31日移至1月的第四个星期五）。在2014年至2018年期间，近四分之一的获奖者和入围者--不包括突发新闻、漫画和摄影--在12月登上新闻台和主页。2019年，18%的作品在当年的最后一个月发表（见图）。


新闻业不是唯一发生这种情况的领域。为了获得奥斯卡奖，电影必须在除夕夜之前在大屏幕上开放。每年12月都会有大量充满希望的竞争者上映。电影制作人希望他们的电影在选民投票时能让他们记忆犹新，这种现象被称为 "回顾性偏见"。果然，近年来，大多数获得奥斯卡 "四大奖项"--最佳影片、导演、男演员和女演员--的影片都在当年第四季度上映。

记者们是否像电影制作人一样，战略性地选择工作时间？也许吧。另外，获奖的出版物可能会说，他们全年都在发表值得普利策奖的作品，而他们最近的项目是最新鲜的，只是最可能被提交。