Declining Honor

Pulitzer Prizes regularly earn more attention for people who do not win than for people who do. It was no different last week when the 1967 awards were announced. Among the recipients were Bernard Malamud for his novel The Fixer, Justin Kaplan for his biography Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, A. P. Photographer Jack Thornell for his picture of the just-wounded James Meredith in Mississippi, the Denver Post's Patrick Oliphant for his editorial cartoons. Worthy winners all, but the man the stories discussed most was Harrison Salisbury, who did not win a thing.

Salisbury was the early-form favorite to take the international reporting prize for his dispatches from Hanoi. His "behind enemy lines" stories had undeniably made the biggest reportorial splash of the year. Yet there was a lingering feeling that he had unprofessionally allowed himself to see and report only those parts of the story that his hosts chose to display. And he cited casualty figures without mentioning their source: the North Vietnamese government. Such feelings did not deter the five-man Pulitzer jury charged with recommending candidates for the journalism awards. By a 4-to-l vote, they made the New York Times assistant managing editor their first choice in the international reporting category because his stories had shown "enterprise, world impact and total significance that outweigh some demerits in on-the-spot reporting."

Miffed Minority. The advisory board, which is actually charged with making the decision, did not agree. Washington Star Editor Newbold Noyes Jr., who voted with the majority, felt that "many correspondents had sought admission to Hanoi, and to my mind Salisbury deserved no special credit for having been the one Hanoi chose to accept. The proper question was the quality of his dispatches, their accuracy and balance. He did not score particularly high in that sense, as compared to what might have been expected of another experienced reporter."

Leader of the minority view was Advisory Board Chairman Joseph Pulitzer Jr., editor-publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and grandson of the prizes' donor. He argued that Salisbury's work was the obvious, pre-eminent example of distinguished international reporting--despite minor technical flaws. Nonetheless, the vote was against Salisbury. Pulitzer asked for an unusual reconsideration the next day in a secret ballot. Again the vote was against Salisbury. Miffed by the rebuff, Pulitzer broke the story of the behind-the-scenes voting in his paper and ran an editorial condemning the board's decision.

Second-Thought Trouble. It might have been easier for Salisbury supporters to swallow defeat if there had been any real competitor. But the winner in international reporting was R. John Hughes, a Christian Science Monitor foreign correspondent whom few had heard of. An ex-Nieman fellow, he is the Monitor's chief Asian correspondent; he won for his coverage of Indonesia. During the initial transfer of power from Sukarno to Suharto, he was the only American reporter present, and his stories provided a straight, factual report of what was going on, though they were hardly exceptional.

One trouble with second-thought Pulitzer Prizes is that they too often reward less than exceptional efforts. Such was the case last week with Edward Albee, who won the prize for drama on the basis of his so-so 1966 play, A Delicate Balance. What Albee's prize really honored was his Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dismissed by the 1963 advisory board, some of whom had not seen or read the play. Albee accepted the 1966 award reluctantly. "The Pulitzer Prize is in danger of losing its position of honor," he said, "and could foreseeably cease to be an honor at all."

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