Yesterday, a friend of mine was awarded the biggest prize in journalism. I can't say I was all that surprised: I've known Matt Waite for a lot of years, and few reporters anywhere have amassed a more impressive body of work than he has. We're talking about a guy who took graduate-level courses and earned the equivalent of a master's degree in order to [get a story](http://www.sptimes.com/2006/webspecials06/wetlands/). So, as many of us heard the news yesterday that Matt and his colleagues at the St. Petersburg Times had won a Pulitzer for national reporting, the natural reaction was: "It was only a matter of time." But there's way more to this story and the significance of what happened yesterday cannot really be overstated. I (among others) described it as a "Color of Money" moment for journalism, and even sent that out as a late-afternoon, stream-of-consciousness tweet. What's hard to convey in 140 characters is the significance of that statement: The award going to PolitiFact -- the first Web project to be so honored -- is a watershed moment for journalism, I believe, much like "The Color of Money" was some 20 years ago. ["The Color of Money,"](http://www.powerreporting.com/color/) for those of you who don't know, was a series on redlining published in 1988 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The lead reporter, Bill Dedman, was awarded the Pulitzer in 1989 for investigative reporting. It was the first Pulitzer awarded to a project that relied heavily on statistics and data analysis -- what has come to be called "computer-assisted reporting." It was after this series that newsrooms took notice. And now, two decades and many Pulitzers later, virtually every major newsroom has someone (or many someones) who specialize in these techniques. In short, after "The Color of Money," newsrooms got serious about CAR. Two decades from now, we may very well refer to some significant event as a "PolitiFact" moment. As of today, newsrooms have to take web journalism seriously. I'm lucky enough to work in one that does, and so is Matt. Unfortunately, we're the exception. (I'll save my screed on this subject for another time; today, let's focus on the positive.) When I got my first look at PolitiFact during the heat of the election, my reaction was simply this: "God damn it." (I know Matt will, rightly, take that as a compliment.) Matt and reporter Bill Adair came up with a clever remix of traditional watchdog reporting and newfangled database-driven web journalism to create something completely new and utterly engaging. PolitiFact is simple, scalable and smart. But is it journalism, some people asked? There's no lead per se, no narrative and no pyramids anywhere to be found, much less the inverted sort. Journalism is about helping people make sense of important issues, and how those issues affect them personally. It's about uncovering that which someone wants to keep hidden. It's about holding people we place in high public office accountable. And by those definitions -- or any other you wish to find -- PolitiFact more than meets the test. It takes a traditional form of newspaper reporting -- fact-checking what politicians say -- and scales it up in a way only possible on the web. That PolitiFact drops the narrative form is irrelevant. That it has defined an entirely new form of journalism -- one that was recognized with the most prestigious award in our field -- is all anyone needs to know today. 2009-04-21T10:15:32-04:00 10 true 2009-04-22T20:29:17-04:00