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I remember in 2015, when the Spotlight movie was coming out, I pitched Columbia Journalism Review an interview with Kristen Lombardi, a staff reporter at the ol’ Boston Phoenix, whose year of work laid the foundation for what the Boston Globe would report on the Catholic Church sex scandal, and what the Globe would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for.
The pitch was an interview on what really happened in journalism, and how the Catholic Church scandal was really broken: by a scrappy reporter (Lombardi) working alone with no resources at an alt-weekly. The piece would be an attempt to set the record straight as Hollywood rewrote history.
For those at the Phoenix at the time of the Spotlight team’s work, the first article in their series about the Catholic Church was commonly thought of as “a summation of Lombardi’s work.” Of course, the Globe never acknowledged her, or her work, and Spotlight reporters even denied ever reading the Phoenix.
Said Lombardi in an interview with Boston magazine around the time the movie came out:
“When the Globe’s series first came out, everybody at the Phoenix was upset about it. The very first story especially, because we felt like it very much was a duplicate of my work on Geoghan… I can honestly say that we were very upset about it, because we felt like…all it takes is a sentence. That’s all it takes, is a sentence, to acknowledge that there was another Boston area reporter out there. That’s all it takes.”
Of course, that would have been the journalistic-ethical (and respectful) thing for the Globe to do. As Boston readers know, everyone read the Boston Phoenix, talked about the Boston Phoenix, and knew what Lombardi was writing about. Because that’s what life was like before the Internet comments sections: People talked about salacious news with each other, in the real world.
My editor at CJR loved the idea of the story I’d pitched, and said he’d get back to me after the day's editorial meeting.
That afternoon, he told me they wouldn’t take the story.
I asked why.
He refused to tell me, but I could tell he was uncomfortable and not happy with the CJR editorial team’s decision.
The only thing I figured was that the Spotlight team had received a Pulitzer, and Pulitzer Prizes are housed by Columbia, and had Columbia Journalism Review (also living at Columbia) published a “true story” of how the Catholic Church scandal broke, it would be bad for the Pulitzer.
But I am speculating, or having a fever dream. After all, I’m just a high school drop out with a quarter century in journalism. What could I possibly intuit about how newsrooms operate?
I have no idea the real reason CJR didn’t take my pitch.
Lombardi, despite the gross oversight by Hollywood and the wider historical record, has done well, going on to work at the Center for Public Integrity, before landing at–surprise!–Columbia.
I remember when I had initially reached out to her about a potential interview, she thanked me for remembering the work she’d done.
That’s what journalism is like: Even journalists can have short memories, and when someone remembers, it’s a breath of fresh air for which to be grateful.
Fast forward nearly a decade, and here I am, judging a journalism contest—NOT the Pulitzer. And first hand, now, I can say: If the Pulitzer category team missed Lombardi’s contribution to Catholic Church scandal coverage, it could easily be excused: They would never have known to look for her reporting.
I learned a lot, judging this as yet unnamed award.
The unpaid position of judging includes months of reading dozens of reporters' work.
There is no time to dig into the reporting. It’s hard work, being a judge.
But if it’s grueling for us, it is certainly grueling for the entrants. Especially financially, for those who freelance.
You see, journalism awards cost money—for the entrants. It can cost anywhere from $30 to $75 to $100 or more to submit a piece of journalism for award consideration, depending on the award. The fee is meant to offset the work of the award (though usually not for the judges). The technology of the platform, for example, to submit and track entries itself costs money. And in broadcast news, the awards are often trophies of some sort (I received one that looks like a large crystal) and those cost money, too.
This cost is often prohibitive, especially for freelancers.
I never knew awards cost money, until an editor apologized that she was unable to submit my work for awards because the outlet had no awards budget. Some of the best work of my journalism career, written for Next City, never received an award. I went over a decade without an award, simply because I didn’t know I should have been coughing up the cash to submit my own work myself. While there are sometimes grants available to offset the cost of awards submissions, that’s not always an option, or there are other restrictions that can keep them out of reach.
I am always grateful to the editors and outlets who have submitted my work for award consideration–always without my knowledge–and I am delighted to have actually won a handful of awards for work at Native News Online, WGCU, and the Boston Phoenix.
So, as I waded through entrants of the award I judged (whose winners will be announced later this year), I was sad to see so many were submitted from big, mainstream outlets themselves: There is a reason Washington Post and the New York Times and the like win so many awards: They have budgets to spend to submit a lot of their own work for awards consideration.
I was even more disappointed to see the metrics by which editors judged the success of a piece of journalism. Entrants were filled with phrases like, “According to our metrics, the story has been a success, generating nearly [a million] engaged minutes on Apple News…” and, “This story was widely read in the U.S.,” and “The story had remarkable reach, becoming one of [our] most widely read stories this year…”
These are the metrics by which editors and publishers want journalism judged. And clicks, shares, and minutes spent reading are, perhaps, the worst metrics by which to judge anything, let alone something that is supposed to serve the public and greater good.
I was also disappointed to note that over 90 percent of the entrants to the category I judged are White.
I was told there are “other categories” where more people of color can be found.
Anyway, I won’t get into the nuance of our conversations as judges, but I was the only non-White person on the team. The others were good reporters, sincere, and committed. But there is something else that has happened in journalism, with effects reaching far and wide: homogenization of thought, and it shows up in how these awards are judged.
It wasn’t as uncomfortable as, for example, the judging scenes in the 2023 film American Fiction, but it wasn’t always easy, either. And certainly, there were moments that resonated with that movie.
I am, however, extremely happy with the winner we chose, who all the judges placed initially in their top 5. The winner paid for their submission from their own pocket, and I suspect spent more money reporting the story than they made. The story has heart, and while it might not have received the most clicks, it is certainly an exceptional example of journalism as historical record.
I hope to share it with you when the winner is announced.
Until then, know that if your favorite writer is oft overlooked, or if you don’t understand why on Earth someone who is so crappy is winning so many awards, well, the system, like life, just isn’t set up to be fair.
I did my best though, judging the pool of entrants we were given. And that’s about all I can do.
Thanks for reading. And for supporting my work.
Ahiy’é. Aché.