Online news editor named to Pulitzer Prize Board

(2009 Capitol News Company LLC)

The Pulitzer Prizes, the most prestigious US journalism awards, announced on Monday that a member of a primarily online news organization had been named to the Pulitzer Board.

The election of Jim VandeHei, 38, the executive editor and co-founder of political website Politico.com, came less than a week after the Pulitzer Board expanded the eligibility of Web-only publications for the awards.

"In many ways, the Pulitzer Board is on the same mission as Politico: to embrace new media while fighting to protect the highest standards for writing, reporting and accuracy," Politico quoted VandeHei as saying. "I am honored to be a part of this effort."

VandeHei's election came five days after the Pulitzer Board revised the eligibility rules for the prizes, opening the door wider to entries from text-based online-only newspapers and news sites.

Last year, the board opened the competition to US news outlets that publish only on the Internet at least weekly.

But it required that entries come from from entities "primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing events."

Sig Gissler, the Columbia University administrator of the prizes, said the requirement had possibly excluded promising entries by "online columnists, critics and bloggers."

The new eligibility rule reads: "Entries for journalism awards must be based on material coming from a text-based United States newspaper or news site that publishes at least weekly during the calendar year and that adheres to the highest journalistic principles."

"The revised rule will provide more flexibility as we focus on the merit of an entry rather than the mission of the website where it appeared," according to Gissler.

Online content from newspaper websites has been permitted in all journalism categories since 2006 but online-only publications were only allowed to submit entries in two categories - breaking news and breaking-news photography.

Among the prize categories are local reporting of breaking news, commentary, feature writing, investigative reporting, explanatory reporting and reporting on national or international affairs.