人物 | 普利策奖创始人的独特人生
约翰·辛格尓·萨金特作普利策画像；
现存哥伦比亚大学档案馆
Joseph Pulitzer painted by John Singer Sargent;
Courtesy Columbia University Archives
19世纪后期，约瑟夫·普利策脱颖而出成为美国新闻界的象征。出生于匈牙利裔家庭，他身上集中了匈牙利人顽强不屈的品格。普利策是最具经验的报纸发行人，热衷于批判政府的虚伪。他也是一位作风非常强硬的竞争对手和具有专业天赋的前瞻者，当出版发行界陷入哗众取宠的斗争中时，他却没有遭受打击。
In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born, an intense indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper publishers, a passionate crusader against dishonest government, a fierce, hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles, and a visionary who richly endowed his profession.
由他出版的《纽约世界报》和《圣路易斯邮报》革新了报纸新闻的发行。普利策是第一个提出在大学中设立新闻学院并培养新闻工作者的的人。毋庸置疑，普利策奖在新闻、文学、音乐和戏剧方面的深远影响可以归功于他的敏锐的长远目光。
His innovative New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism. And certainly, the lasting influence of the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and drama is to be attributed to his visionary acumen.
早年生活
约瑟夫·普利策于1847年4月10日生于匈牙利毛科市，父亲是一名富裕的匈牙利马扎尔与犹太混血粮商，母亲是虔诚的德国罗马天主教教徒。普利策在军队中服役了几年之后，在圣路易斯找了一份工作。那段时间他经常沉浸在圣路易斯商业图书馆当中，学习英语和法律。
Joseph Pulitzer was born in Mako, Hungary on April 10, 1847, the son of a wealthy grain merchant of Magyar-Jewish origin and a German mother who was a devout Roman Catholic. After serving for years in the army, he worked in St. Louis during which he usually immersed himself in Mercantile Library, studying English and the law.
职业
开端
Beginning of A Career
普利策职业生涯的重大机遇是在图书馆的象棋室以一种奇特的方式出现的。在观看两个常客下棋时，他对一步棋的敏锐判断折服了两位棋手，于是他们和普利策聊了起来。这两位棋手恰好是一份德语大报《西方邮报》的编辑。接着，他们邀请普利策去该报工作。
His great career opportunity came in a unique manner in the library's chess room. Observing the game of two habitues, he astutely critiqued a move and the players, impressed, engaged Pulitzer in conversation. The players were editors of the leading German language daily, Westliche Post, and a job offer followed.
1872年，得到工作四年之后，年轻的普利策已经颇具声望，是个孜孜不倦、富于进取心的记者。由于报社老板的破产，普利策获得了报社的实际拥有权。25岁时，普利策成为了一名出版商，并在接下来一系列成功的商业运作中成为了《圣路易斯邮报》的老板，以及新闻业界一枚冉冉升起的新星。
Four years later, in 1872, the young Pulitzer, who had built a reputation as a tireless enterprising journalist, was offered a controlling interest in the paper by the nearly bankrupt owners. At age 25, Pulitzer became a publisher and there followed a series of shrewd business deals from which he emerged in 1878 as the owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and a rising figure on the journalistic scene.
个人
改变
Personal Changes
同年早期，普利策同来自华盛顿的社会名流凯特·戴维斯在美国圣公会教堂步入婚姻殿堂。这个曾经在圣路易斯贫民街道的流浪汉、被嘲笑叫做“犹太人乔”的年轻匈牙利移民，已经脱胎换骨，成为一名美国公民。并且还成为了一名演说家、作家、精通英语的编辑。他优雅的服饰，英俊的红棕色胡须和夹鼻眼镜，使他和圣路易斯的社会精英看起来一样，享受着时髦聚会上的舞会和公园里的马术。但这种生活方式在他掌控《圣路易斯邮报》的所有权之后被立刻摒弃了。
Earlier in the same year, he and Kate Davis, a socially prominent Washingtonian woman, were married in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Hungarian immigrant youth - once a vagrant on the slum streets of St. Louis and taunted as "Joey the Jew" - had been transformed. Now he was an American citizen and as speaker, writer, and editor had mastered English extraordinarily well. Elegantly dressed, wearing a handsome, reddish-brown beard and pince-nez glasses, he mixed easily with the social elite of St. Louis, enjoying dancing at fancy parties and horseback riding in the park. This lifestyle was abandoned abruptly when he came into the ownership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
詹姆斯·怀曼·巴雷特，《纽约世界报》的最后一任城市版编辑，在他撰写的《约瑟夫·普利策和他的世界》（Joseph Pulitzer and His World）一书中，这样描写普利策在拥有《圣路易斯邮报》之后的工作状态：“（他）从清晨伏案工作到深夜甚至更晚，对报社的一切都倾注着热爱。”为了让公众认可他的报纸是当之无愧的第一，普利策发表了言论强烈的调查文章和社论，谴责政府腐败、富有的逃税者和投机商人。这一平民主义的举措非常有效，发行量大增，报纸取得成功。如果普利策有幸能知道他后来设立的普利策新闻奖体系中，授予揭露腐败专题的奖项比授予其他专题的都多，他肯定会感到非常欣慰。
James Wyman Barrett, the last city editor of The New York World, records in his biography Joseph Pulitzer and His World how Pulitzer, in taking hold of the Post-Dispatch, "worked at his desk from early morning until midnight or later, interesting himself in every detail of the paper." Appealing to the public to accept that his paper was their champion, Pulitzer splashed investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers. This populist appeal was effective, circulation mounted, and the paper prospered. Pulitzer would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.
健康
恶化
Failing Health
普利策为他拼命三郎式的工作方式付出了代价，他的健康遭到了破坏。由于视力下降，普利策和妻子于1883年去往纽约，准备按照医生的要求乘坐轮船赴欧洲进行休假。但普利策非常固执，他没有在纽约登船，而是和金融家杰·古尔德会面，协商购买《纽约世界报》的相关事宜，当时该报正处于财务困境之中。
Pulitzer paid a price for his unsparingly rigorous work at his newspaper. His health was undermined and, with his eyes failing, Pulitzer and his wife set out in 1883 for New York to board a ship on a doctor-ordered European vacation. Stubbornly, instead of boarding the steamer in New York, he met with Jay Gould, the financier, and negotiated the purchase of The New York World, which was in financial straits.
普利策抛开了他严重的健康问题，不断地寻找着自身的方向，为《纽约世界报》带来了巴雷特称之为编辑方针、内容以及形式上的“一人革命”。他采用了一些与提高《圣路易斯邮报》发行量相同的技巧，讨伐公共和私有部门的腐败，在新闻栏目中使用一连串耸人听闻的报道，第一次在报纸中大幅运用插画，并且制造新闻噱头。在最成功的一次宣传中，《纽约世界报》发起公众捐赠活动，为在纽约港入口处建造自由女神像基座筹款，使得当时在法国等待运输的自由女神有了安放之处。
Putting aside his serious health concerns, Pulitzer immersed himself in its direction, bringing about what Barrett describes as a "one-man revolution" in the editorial policy, content, and format of The World. He employed some of the same techniques that had built up the circulation of the Post-Dispatch. He crusaded against public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations, and staged news stunts. In one of the most successful promotions, The World raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance to the New York harbor so that the Statue of Liberty, which was stranded in France awaiting shipment, could be emplaced.
磨难
重重
More Difficulties
这种模式的效果非常显著，在此后十年中《纽约世界报》所有版本的发行量攀升至六十万份，并且统治了全国报纸发行量的最大份额。但出乎意料的是，普利策本人成为了发行量大战中的受害者。《太阳报》（The Sun）的出版商查尔斯·安德森·德纳因为觊觎《纽约世界报》的成功而针对普利策发表了恶意的人身攻击，称他是“违背了自己种族和宗教的犹太人”。这种无休止的攻击就是在试图离间纽约犹太团体与《纽约世界报》。
The formula worked so well that in the next decade the circulation of The World in all its editions climbed to more than 600,000, and it reigned as the largest circulating newspaper in the country. But unexpectedly Pulitzer himself became a victim of the battle for circulation when Charles Anderson Dana, publisher of The Sun, frustrated by the success of The World launched vicious personal attacks on him as "the Jew who had denied his race and religion." The unrelenting campaign was designed to alienate New York's Jewish community from The World.
普利策的健康状况在这次事件的磨难中恶化，1890年，43岁的他从《纽约世界报》辞去总编职务，从此以后再没有回到新闻编辑室中。他最终失明，并在深度神经衰弱中患上了一种对噪音极其敏感的疾病。他在国外苦苦寻找治疗方案，然而最终无果。他此后二十年中大部分时间都在隔音的“地下室”中度过，他自己形容，无论是在他的“自由号”游艇上，还是在缅因州巴尔港的静修地“寂静塔”中，还是在纽约的宅邸中。那些年里，尽管他非常频繁地出行，普利策仍旧对报纸的编辑和报业的发展方向保持着密切掌控。为了确保通讯的保密性，他依靠一本写满了代码的笔记本工作，其中包含约两万个名字和术语。
Pulitzer's health was fractured further during this ordeal and in 1890, at the age of 43, he withdrew from the editorship of The World and never returned to its newsroom. Virtually blind, having in his severe depression succumbed also to an illness that made him excruciatingly sensitive to noise, Pulitzer went abroad frantically seeking cures. He failed to find them, and the next two decades of his life he spent largely in soundproofed "vaults," as he referred to them, aboard his yacht, Liberty, in the "Tower of Silence" at his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine, and at his New York mansion. During those years, although he traveled very frequently, Pulitzer managed, nevertheless, to maintain the closest editorial and business direction of his newspapers. To ensure secrecy in his communications he relied on a code that filled a book containing some 20,000 names and terms.
战争
年代
War Years
1896到1898年间，普利策陷入了同威廉·伦道夫·赫斯特的《纽约日报》的发行量战争中。在当时，对于耸人听闻和捏造新闻还没有明确的限制。当古巴人反抗西班牙人的统治时，普利策和赫斯特都希望通过煽动反西班牙人的愤怒情绪来一决高下。他们都号召美国向西班牙发起战争，尤其是在1898年2月15日美国缅因号战舰于哈瓦那港神秘爆炸并沉入海底之后。美国国会对强烈抗议做出了回应，宣布以战争作为解决方式。在长达四个月的战争后，普利策宣布停止“黄色新闻”（通过夸张渲染耸人听闻的新闻报道）。
During the years 1896 to 1898 Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst's Journal in which there were no apparent restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news. When the Cubans rebelled against Spanish rule, Pulitzer and Hearst sought to outdo each other in whipping up outrage against the Spanish. Both called for war against Spain after the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up and sank in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. Congress reacted to the outcry with a war resolution. After the four-month war, Pulitzer withdrew from what had become known as "yellow journalism."
《纽约世界报》变得更加克制，并成为了许多事件中民主党在新闻言论上的代表性声音。在历史学家眼中，普利策在“黄色新闻”上的失误不能掩盖他在公共服务事业上的成就。他勇敢并且成功地鞭挞了政府和商业中的腐败问题。他在很大程度上为反托拉斯法和保险行业规范的通过做出了贡献。
The World became more restrained and served as the influential editorial voice on many issues of the Democratic Party. In the view of historians, Pulitzer's lapse into "yellow journalism" was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust legislation and regulation of the insurance industry.
1909年，《纽约世界报》揭露了一起由美国支付给法国巴拿马运河公司金额高达四千万美金的作弊案。联邦政府向《纽约世界报》发起了严厉反击，指责普利策诽谤美国总统西奥多·罗斯福及银行家J.P.摩根等人。普利策拒绝撤回报道，《纽约世界报》也坚持对事件的继续调查。最终当法庭提出撤销对普利策的起诉后，他被称赞取得了捍卫新闻出版自由的重大胜利。
In 1909, The World exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company. The federal government lashed back at The World by indicting Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore Roosevelt and the banker J.P. Morgan, among others. Pulitzer refused to retreat, and The World persisted in its investigation. When the courts dismissed the indictments, Pulitzer was applauded for a crucial victory on behalf of freedom of the press.
1904年5月，普利策在《北美评论》上发表文章，以支持他建立新闻学院的提议。他总结了自己的信条：“我们的共和国和新闻出版业同生共死。一个有着强大力量、公正客观、有公德心的新闻业，加上训练有素并有勇气为正义献身的智慧头脑，能够捍卫公众精神和道德，缺乏这些品质，民选政府就是虚伪而拙劣的。而一个愤世嫉俗、唯利是图、蛊惑人心的新闻业会造就像其自身一样卑劣的民众。塑造共和国未来的力量将会在新一代新闻记者手中。”
In May 1904, writing in The North American Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."
时至
今日
1912 - Present
1912年，即普利策在他的游艇上离世一年后，哥伦比亚大学新闻研究生院成立。1917年，在他授权委托的评选委员会监督下，第一届普利策奖颁发。普利策预先设立了一个主要由新闻报纸出版商组成的评选委员会，其他委员也包括哥伦比亚大学校长和学者，以及“除记者、编辑外的其他知名人士”。目前，委员会的19名成员主要由著名编辑和新闻报刊主管组成。还包括四名学者，其中有哥大校长和哥大新闻研究生院院长。新闻研究生院院长和奖项的管理者没有投票权。主席职位每年轮换，由最年长的成员担当。委员会自身拥有选举会员的永久权力。拥有选举权的成员任期三届，每届任期三年。在选举评选委员会和评审团成员时，主要考量的是专业才能和水平，以及在性别、种族背景、地域分布和报纸规模方面的多样性。
In 1912, one year after Pulitzer's death aboard his yacht, the Columbia School of Journalism was founded, and the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917 under the supervision of the advisory board to which he had entrusted his mandate. Pulitzer envisioned an advisory board composed principally of newspaper publishers. Others would include the president of Columbia University and scholars, and "persons of distinction who are not journalists or editors." Today, the 19-member board is composed mainly of leading editors or news executives. Four academics also serve, including the president of Columbia University and the dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. The dean and the administrator of the prizes are non-voting members. The chair rotates annually to the most senior member. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years. In the selection of the members of the board and of the juries, close attention is given to professional excellence and affiliation, as well as diversity in terms of gender, ethnic background, geographical distribution and size of newspaper.
The translation is for your reference only
译文仅供参考，内容以英文为准
照片来源：Pulitzer Prizes Celebrate 100 Newsworthy Years
http://news.columbia.edu/content/pulitzer-prizes-celebrate-100-newsworthy-years
编译：宜晴、思明
校对：慎之
责编：慎之