I hate to say I told you so, but I predicted back in January 2012 when the New York Times followed since disgraced monologist Mike Daisey’s lead and sent a team of reporters to write about the working conditions in Chinese iPad factories, that the paper was going for a Pulitzer.
It didn’t matter that every major U.S. electronics company assembles its products under the same working conditions—or worse. Or that Apple (AAPL) was actually doing something about them. (Tim Cook called the Times‘ implication that Apple didn’t care what happened to its subcontractors’ workers “patently false and offensive.”)
The fact is, the New York Times knows how to win Pulitzers—better than any other journalistic operation. It has now won a record 112. It employs editors who specialize in identifying Pulitzer-winning topics and assigning reporters who will bring them home.
And that’s what it set out to do—with Apple as its conspicuous subject—in seven major stories capped with a self-serving kicker that suggested that it was Times‘ reporting that led to substantive changes in the working conditions in China’s electronics factories:
Part 1: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
Part 2: In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
Part 3: How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Global Taxes
Part 4: Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay
Part 7: The Patent, Mighty as a Sword
Part 8: As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living
Part 9: Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China
As I wrote after that last story, published just under the wire for the Pulitzer committee’s Dec. 25, 2012, deadline:
“Never mind that Apple’s competitors all outsource work, sidestep taxes, use patents as weapons and turn an even blinder eye to labor abuses in the Asian supply chain. The fact is, Apple—always a draw for readers—made a big, fat, easy target.”
And on Monday the New York Times‘ got its reward: A 2013 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for “its penetrating look into business practices by Apple and other technology companies that illustrates the darker side of a changing global economy for workers and consumers.”
Link: The Pulitzer Prize Board 2012-2013. The jury for this award:
Kathleen L. Best, managing editor, content creation, The Seattle Times
See also:
• Apple in China: The New York Times goes for the Pulitzer
• Tim Cook blasts the New York Times’ report on Apple’s Chinese iPad factories
• Can the N.Y. Times ride Apple all the way to a Pulitzer?