The View from Here – with Updates and Predictions

Unless you live in Seattle, where it’s been hard to lift the head off the pillow to stare into one more day of grey dampness, diversion seems to have been afoot in the world.

UPDATE: this morning the Seattle Times put a number to my kvetching: this winter’s unrelenting rain has broken a 122-year record and we’ve got one week of April TK.

Sigh.  To continue:

Consider the Pulitzers:  I’m always relieved when a Pulitzer is given to work I can at least pretend to know about, but this year’s list was damn near a personal trifecta.  Let me share a little of the good stuff:

At The New Yorker, one went to Hilton Als, whose theatre criticism I read so avidly you’d think my next stop was the Times Square TKTS booth.  The magazine provides ten of his reviews from 2016 that were part of the Pulitzer submission;  try the one titled Dreamgirls for a riveting start, it’s Als’ layered look at a revival of The Color Purple.

Hilton Als’ New Yorker Pulitzer texts

Next was the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, whose persistent digging buried for all time Donald Trump’s lies about his “charitable” giving. It may even have retired the Trump Foundation for the foreseeable future.

You may have met Fahrenthold as we did, on Rachel Maddow’s show but it you haven’t, be sure to look at the picture with the WAPo’s coverage of his celebration in the newsroom. Reflecting back the grins of everyone in the room, Fahrenthold also has his comforting hands on his young daughter, the only one who doesn’t look thrilled to be there (sparkly T-shirt notwithstanding.)

David Fahrenthold’s winning investigation into Donald Trump’s philanthrophy

Remember the 2015 movie Spotlight and the insider sense it created as we watched those Boston Globe reporters dig into a child molestation coverup within their city’s own Archdiocese?  You get the same “insider” sense reading the Post’s pitch-perfect account of Fahrenthold’s alternately dogged and inspired steps that led to his award.

The 39-year-old Fahrenthold broke journalism’s cardinal rule about keeping your work- in-progress “secret and guarded” by turning to social media for tips and help as he and his assistant called 450-some charities to see if they’d had a donation from Trump. (At the 400 mark they’d found one.) Then he used Twitter to keep his readers up with his progress, and as his coverage grew, so did their encouragement. . .and their confidence in his reporting.

You probably already know the best part of this story: I’ll just say bless a reporter who’s (cautiously) open to a red-hot tip. Actually, it would be no exaggeration to call the self-effacing Farenthold the father of the post-inauguration Woman’s March, pussy hats and all. Then watch him blush.

The last of the Pulitzers I really, really follow is their Photography award, which had a telling note from its nominating jury this year. After considering Daniel Berehulak’s soul-shriving photos of the dead and dying in the nighttime streets and alleys of Manila, the nominating jury moved them from the Feature Photography category to Breaking News — exactly the right call while President Duterte’s so called “drug war” continues.

Slideshow of Daniel Berehulak’s award-winning photographs

If Berehulak’s name is familiar, it may be because two years ago, he was in the Belgian Congo, where his up-far-too-close view of the Ebola crisis won that year’s Pulitzer.  Since I am constitutionally unable to imagine the everyday dimensions of his life (or the lives of any of his photojournalist comrades-in-arms) finding this revealing interview by Jim Colton in which Berehulak describes, among other things, the nuts and bolts of his Congo shoot, was. .  . .comforting.

z PhotoJournal Interview with Daniel Berehulak

UPDATE:  As I was writing this, the I.C.C. filed its first  “mass murder” complaint against the Philippine president, as Filipino lawyer Jude Sabio cited Duterte’s  “terrifying, gruesome and disastrous drug war that has left 7,000 people dead.”   Let us hope that along with Leila de Lima, Duterte’s bravely outspoken opponent in (and out of) the Philippine Senate, lawyer Sabio stays safe.

Now for those predictions:  okay, so not this year, but as soon as it isn’t a drawback to be published in the NY Times (we’re exempting photographers here, obviously), their great book critic Dwight Garner will absolutely take home his overdue Pulitzer.

You can read every one of my exceptionally well-supported reasons in my CQF mash note, Putty in His Hands, from June 5^th, 2012.  (Where did the time go?) He has only gotten better.

Putty in His Hands

Then, and this will probably take a little longer – the Committee seems to like to thumb through a thick stack of work for the same publication — check out Justin Chang’s quite astonishing film criticism at the Los Angeles Times.  Then consider that he was writing like that before at Variety, on deadline, which virtually means see it/write it/file it.  Takes the breath away. His Pulitzer will only be a matter of time.

Here’s a recent trio: Get Out, After the Storm, Paterson