01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, April 8, 2004

WASHINGTON

THE LOS ANGELES Times this week won five Pulitzer Prizes for excellence in journalism, the second most won by a publication in a single year. Before next year's awards, I would recommend that the Pulitzer judges actually read The Times for more than two consecutive days.

As a longtime resident of Los Angeles who recently moved to Washington, D.C., I found The Times's coverage of the city and its core industries, such as entertainment, woefully inadequate. The paper's editors seemed more interested in competing with The New York Times than in serving their readers. The front page was usually restricted to news and/or features on international and national events. One was more likely to see an article on Sri Lanka than Santa Monica.

The Times reached a new low in editors' snobbery last year when Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant was arrested for sexual assault in Colorado. The story had all the elements: hometown star; national celebrity; sex; highly controversial issues of justice. However, The Times chose to cover the arrest -- and nearly every other future Bryant development -- on the sports page! While its rival, The Los Angeles Daily News, featured a huge photo of Bryant's mug shot on the front page, the Times's editors seemed to be saying, "Sorry, it's a basketball story. It's not important enough." (The Bryant bungle was not the first time that the paper had ignored a sports story that had local and national interest. In 2001, the Lakers won 19 straight games, but never made the front page until game 17.)

Of course, Bryant's fall from grace was the only thing that Los Angeles residents were talking about that day, but to the Times, that didn't seem to matter. The editors would determine what was news and what was not.

However, the readers would make their own determinations. In September 2003, daily circulation at the Times (Monday through Saturday) had fallen 1.1 percent for the past six months (following a 0.6-percent decline in the previous six-month period). The Times and The Washington Post were the only papers in the Top 10 circulation leaders (as compiled by Advertising Age) to lose readers during that period. (To be fair, I add that the Times's Sunday circulation had risen 0.2 percent.)

I raise these issues not just to expose the Los Angeles Times and its journalistic elitism. The Pulitzer board's decision to recognize The Times is yet another example of the board's predisposition to favor certain papers, story topics and, perhaps, political leanings.

Despite The Times's obvious failings, the Pulitzer board issued awards for its coverage of the California wildfires, the meteoric growth of Wal-Mart and the civil war in Liberia. No doubt the recipients did fine work, but one has to ask why The Times was singled out for so much praise at this time.

Come on, five awards? Could it be because the newspaper has been under fierce attack for allegedly shading its news coverage to favor liberal issues?

For instance, The Times's front page often leads with a negative news story on the Iraq war. In addition, the paper took heat for publishing a series of articles on Arnold Schwarzenegger's alleged sexual misbehavior on the eve of the California gubernatorial recall election; Schwarzenegger is a Republican.

You may disagree that the Pulitzer board, which consists of newspaper editors around America, was politically motivated. And you may be right. The editors may have just wanted to help out a fellow editor-in-chief who is under siege (The Times's John Carroll, who is very popular with his colleagues in the industry).

However, if you review the board's other awards, you have to wonder: The New York Times took the public-service award for exposing businesses that violate safety rules; The Toledo Blade won the investigative-reporting prize for a series on U.S. military atrocities against civilians during the Vietnam War; The Washington Post won for international reporting for its series on, well, let's have the Pulitzer board describe it: "[Iraqis] as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended."

Oh, those poor Iraqis! They lost their leader and had their way of life upended. And things were going so well until then.

Big business doing bad things; the U.S. military committing atrocities; the Bush administration upending the Iraqis' way of life. Do you see a trend here?

Pulitzer jurors who work carefully studying the contest submissions are often overturned at the last minute by the board, which has the final say even if it doesn't know nearly as much about the stories being submitted as do the jurors. In addition to maintaining a suspect political agenda, the board invariably hands out awards to certain powerful and favored papers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In fact, this year the board was so anxious to recognize The New York Times (another liberal-leaning newspaper under attack, over the Jayson Blair scandal), it moved The Times's submission from investigative reporting to public service so that it could win. It was The New York Times's sole prize for the year.

And when a small, relatively obscure paper does actually get a prize, it's invariably for a story on some dastardly conservative position or institution. Example: The Toledo Blade on U.S. military atrocities. Or a politically correct stand on something like gay marriage, such as The Rutland (Vt.) Herald's editorials touting civil unions a couple of years ago. Can you imagine the Pulitzer board giving a prize for editorials against gay marriage or civil unions, however well written?

I now live in Washington, D.C., where I read The Washington Post, which is a great newspaper and prizeworthy in any year. However, if The Post wins again next year, as is likely, it won't necessarily be for its good work. The fix is in.

Phillip Swann is a media analyst, president and publisher of TVPredictions.com and the co-author, with Edward Achorn, of How to Land a Job in Journalism.