Loebs and blogging don’t mix

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon, who was a Loeb Award judge this year, argues that the Pulitzer Prizes of business journalism still haven’t figured out blogging, and bloggers still haven’t figured out the Loebs.

Salmon writes, “Reuters nominated me for the Online Commentary and Blogging category and I didn’t make the final four. And this is the point at which according to convention I should talk about how wonderful the nominees are and how any of them will make a worthy winner. But I won’t, because this award is broken — and indeed is even more broken than I had thought it would be when I first wrote about it in November.

“To understand why, put yourself in the position of an editor who asks a writer to start up a new blog. The writer agrees, but the blog never takes off. The writer insists on filing carefully honed and balanced self-contained news analyses and does so only every few weeks. After a handful of these things, the blog is abandoned as a failure and the writer continues doing the old-fashioned journalism he’s clearly good at.

“Well, a blog just like that is a finalist for the Loeb award. After filing the grand total of 21 blog entries over the course of all of 2009, Jim Prevor, or his editors, picked the best three and submitted them, along with a $100 check; the blog had already been killed by that point and Prevor has posted nothing this year.”

Read more here.