Reading Pulitzer's Gold, a history of some of the winners of the Pulitzer gold medal for public service journalism, a few things struck me as particularly relevant to B2B journalism. One was in the story of two reporters from different papers (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Daily News) teaming up to cover an important story -- the presence of newspaper personnel on the Illinois State payroll -- that neither paper would likely have had the resources to do alone. Given that B2B publications often operate on tight budgets, maybe this is an approach B2Bs could use more often. Has anyone teamed up with reporters at a related publication, perhaps at the same company, to cover an issue that was too big for one publication to tackle?

For the same reason (tight budgets), I also found the chapter "Davids and Goliaths" interesting. It tells the stories of two very small papers that won the public service prize for journalism -- the Anchorage Daily News and the Lufkin (Texas) News, with an editorial staff of two. (Coincidentally, yesterday's ASBPE blog post also talks about how small publications can do good work and win awards.)

Another thing that struck me was how The New York Times won the award in 1918 specifically for the public service it rendered by publishing the full text of reports, speeches, and other documents relating to World War I. It reminded me of how people talked in the mid-1990s about the Internet would allow media to provide such a great public service to readers by publishing the full text of documents that there wouldn't be room for in print. Turns out it wasn't a new idea.