The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded this week, and we thought it was appropriate to look at the lessons learned from winners and finalists.

More than any other year, this year’s Pulitzer Prizes featured journalists who were making strong use of the Internet. One of our top beatbloggers almost won an award. Unfortunately, Elliot Spitzer couldn’t keep his pants on.

Each of these winners and finalists below showcase how the Internet can help revolutionize journalism. What they were able to using databases, blogs, video, live chats, etc helped cover a major story or event better than what was possible even a few years ago. These examples demonstrate the Internet is in fact great for journalism.

Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle

• The Houston Chronicle was a finalist for the breaking news award. The Chronicle was recognized for its outstanding Hurricane Ike coverage.
• It’s coverage featured live, daily chats with science writer Eric Berger about the oncoming storm, continuous updates and coverage on Berger’s SciGuy blog, around the clock updates on Chron.com, information after the storm struck (including a database of which areas of Houston had power restored), a map of Ike’s damage, video reports, a dedicated “Ike’s Answers” blog and much more. It’s hard to imagine a more complete package of information and reports from a news organizations.
• This is what the Pulitzer committee had to say about the Chronicle’s hurricane coverage, “For taking full advantage of online technology and its newsroom expertise to become a lifeline to the city when Hurricane Ike struck, providing vital minute-by-minute updates on the storm, its flood surge and its aftermath.”
• Berger said to me in an e-mail, “during the hurricane my blog had about 3.5 million page views and the daily live chats I did drew up to 14,000 viewers each time. One of my bosses remarked that it’s not every day a science writer could fill a basketball arena. Additionally, the comments from readers during and after the storm were tremendously positive and heartwarming. I also got great feedback from the director of the National Hurricane Center and storm forecasters who got what I was trying to do in terms of translating their work into meaningful real-time information for people on the ground. So while the Pulitzer recognition for what we did is nice, I’d already received this amazing feedback from critics who matter most to me, the readers and forecasters.”

PolitiFact | The St. Petersburg Times

• We’d like to congratulate one of the shinning beacons of Web journalism, PolitiFact on winning a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
• Technically, PolitiFact isn’t beatblogging. Regardless, it rocks. Politifact offers a lot of strong examples for journalists and journalism organizations on how databases can improve journalism. PolitiFact is a shinning example of how getting away from the inverted pyramid and column inches can improve journalism. Plus, PolitiFact is only possible on the Web.
• PolitiFact has forever changed how politics — especially presidential elections — will be covered. The whole site is based around the simple concept of examining the claims of politicians, pundits and lobbyists. Instead of stringing a bunch of these examinations into one, long post or story, PolitiFact breaks them up into individually searchable vignettes. The Django backbone of PolitiFact both makes the site easy to build and update, while also making it really easy to use. Bravo.
• The prize committee recognized PolitiFact for its, “fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters. (Moved by the Board to the National Reporting category.)”
• “Neil Brown, executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times, which launched PolitiFact in August 2007, said the award was ‘proof that the Web is not a death sentence for newspapers. In fact, PolitiFact marries the power of old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism with an extraordinarily powerful way to present it.’”
• The good news for all of is that this summer they plan to expand their coverage of pundits and talk show hosts. They will also be expanding their state and local fact-checking.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• The Post-Dispatch was a breaking news finalist because of its coverage — online and in print — of a deadly city hall shooting.
• The prize committee made the Post-Dispatch a finalist,  “for its creative and aggressive coverage, both online and in print, of a city hall shooting that left six people dead, displaying an exemplary blend of speed and rigor in its reporting.”
• Like the Chronicle, the Post-Dispatch covered this story from a variety of angles and in a variety of mediums from videos to numerous stories to slideshows, audio interviews, a condolences blog, an interactive graphic and more.
• Edward J. Delaney of The Nieman Lab reports that, “In the Post-Dispatch newsroom, the paper had only recently shifted to what managing editor Pam Maples called an “online first” approach. The paper had only recently integrated its online and print staffs so that “we didn’t have one of those online units sitting over in the corner.”
• A news organization like the Post-Dispatch is uniquely positioned in the community to provide this kind of breadth and depth of coverage. Other outlets and blogs could have provided some of those coverage, but it takes an organization like the Post-Dispatch to create the complete package. This is called owning a story