It got lost in the shuffle, but yesterday the Pulitzer Prizes were announced. And despite our excellent track record of chasing down good brunch and determining which AmeriCan is the most American, the Pulitzer committee once again didn’t recognize our work. They did however, award a prize to a Brooklyn-based blog: InsideClimate News, which only has seven reporters scattered around the country, but is base in Brooklyn, took home a prize for their reporting on an enormous oil spill on the Kalamazoo River.
The Dilbit Disaster series spans 10 stories and starts at occurrence of the spill in 2010 then works through the way the spill impacted the community of Marshall, Michigan, problems with technology that’s supposed to detect spills, the lack of government oversight on oil pipelines and community efforts to fight a replacement pipeline. They latched on to the story like a vise, and in light of the Mayflower, Arkansas oil spill, it’s required reading for anyone who wants to just give up on life better understand the potential downsides of running a pipeline through people’s backyards. So congratulations guys, enjoy it. As for us, we’ll just have to wait until next year.