I don’t know that anyone outside the industries it awards still cares about the Pulitzers. Mostly the journalism end seems of an era with press passes worn in hatbands and editors shouting “stop the presses”. The Pulitzers were tainted from the start, but back then at least people took the trappings of journalism seriously. Now hardly anyone does.

Still it’s a notable step on the ladder down for the Pulitzers to award not the investigation into the Uvalde massacre, which was actually significant and riveted a nation, but for a series of hit pieces on the Supreme Court whose highlight was something about the house Justice Clarence Thomas’ mom lived in.

But more significant still is the recipient.

Sure the media consists of leftist hacks pushing narratives, but the award to ProPublica is notable because PP doesn’t even have the fig leaf of a media operation. It’s a leftist group set up by a notorious scammer who helped cause the previous recession which was being funded by leftist donors.

ProPublica is a leftist nonprofit set up as an “ethical watchdog” by Herbert Sandler, listed by Time Magazine, as one of the 25 people to blame for the financial crisis of 2008, and more bluntly by Saturday Night Live as, ““people who should be shot”.

ProPublica had gotten its initial funding with the money harvested by Sandler from taking down Wachovia, and, more recently, it was promised $10 million by Sam-Bankman Fried whose collapse of FTX helped bring down Silicon Valley Bank and cause the worst wave of bank failures since the Wachovia collapse.

To whatever extent the media plays the ‘objectivity’ card, ProPublica is just a leftist operation looking for wins. It’s no different than the SPLC or the ACLU.

And while that distinction may not matter much to the average person, it’s a definite shift away from even the trappings of journalism.