AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: Pulitzer prizes are the most prestigious certificates of excellence in the world of media and the arts in America.
The Pulitzer for poetry this year went to Paul Muldoon, from Portadown, Co Armagh, who worked as a BBC producer in Belfast for 13 years before coming to live in the US in 1987. Now a professor at Princeton University, he was awarded the Pulitzer for his latest collection, Moy Sand and Gravel, which is set to become a best-seller in US bookstores.
The award for best drama went to Nilo Cruz, a Cuban immigrant, for Anna in the Tropics, which has only been produced in Coral Gables, Florida, but is now destined to be a sure-fire hit on Broadway.
The commercial impact of the prize is so great that newspapers plan for months ahead to produce entries for consideration. Winning a Pulitzer, named after the famous 19th-century Hungarian-born journalist Joseph Pulitzer, helps circulation and advertising and determines the status of editors.
When the New York Times won seven Pulitzers last year - six for its coverage of September 11th - it was seen as a massive endorsement of new executive editor Howell Raines, himself a former winner.
What a difference a year makes. This time the New York Times got only one award, compared to three each for its great rivals, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. One of the Pulitzers gained by the LA Times caused particular heartburn in the New York Times editorial offices.
It was won by Kevin Sack, Atlanta bureau chief, for his national reporting. Two years ago, Sack was one of six New York Times staff members told to relocate to Washington or New York in a shake-up by Mr Raines. His request to stay in Atlanta for personal reasons - he has joint custody of a young daughter - was rejected. Sack resigned to join the LA Times, which let him stay in Atlanta.
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After last year's triumph of seven Pulitzers, there was bound to be a correction at the New York Times. But one of its entries for 2003 seemed to be aimed as much at snubbing its critics as winning a coveted prize.
At the last minute, the editors reportedly pulled a series on the Washington sniper in favour of another entry - its aggressive reporting on the refusal by the Augusta Golf Club, where the US Masters is taking place this week, to admit women.
In a controversial editorial on November 18th, the paper asked Tiger Woods to boycott the Masters this year as a protest against the men-only policy. Woods responded that he agreed women should be admitted, but that it was not his decision to make.
Many sports-writers and commentators agreed with Woods, including two of the most prominent columnists on the New York Times, both of whom wrote articles disagreeing with the paper's policy, which the paper refused to publish. The New York Times also came under criticism for making so much of the women-in-golf issue.
It ran 33 articles on the dispute from July to December 3rd last year, including a story on page one which said merely that CBS had "no comment" on whether it would continue providing television coverage of the prestigious golf championship. It is providing coverage.
The New York Times in the end backed down and published the columns. In one, sportswriter Dave Anderson (another Pulitzer Prize winner) began with the plea: "Please, let Tiger Woods just play golf." He said it would be a more effective protest if a victorious Woods were to put the winner's green jacket on his mother's shoulders as a snub to Hootie Johnson, the Augusta president, who has brusquely resisted women members.
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However, the big media winner of the week in the US, in commercial terms, has been Rupert Murdoch. After three years of regulatory fights, his News Corporation acquired control of Hughes Electronics and its DirecTV satellite operation from General Motors in a $6.6 billion deal.
DirecTV is the largest American satellite operator and Murdoch has now completed a network of satellite systems across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, giving the media baron a global ring of satellite television services reaching 100 million households.
The ideological impact of Murdoch on the US media is enormous. Pro-Bush and pro-war in Iraq and aggressively conservative on every issue, he personally shapes the editorial policies of the media outlets he owns.
When in New York, the Australian-born proprietor frequently drops into editorial and production meetings at the tabloid New York Post and Fox News, the 24-hour news and talk cable channel which he set up with former Republican consultant Roger Ailes as a conservative antidote to CNN, which he considered too liberal. Fox News is already bigger than CNN in the US and it has shifted the balance of American cable news reporting to the right.
In the 1991 Gulf War, CNN was the big winner in television ratings, but this time Fox News has benefited most in overall viewership. In the first 19 days of the war, Fox averaged 3.3 million viewers, CNN 2.7 million and the third cable news channel MSNBC 1.4 million. In all cases, this represented more than a threefold increase.
All three cable channels took viewers away from the regular TV network news, especially young viewers.
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Now that Saddam Hussein has lost power, the chief news executive at CNN, Eason Jordan, has been revealing some of the things he could not report in his frequent trips to Baghdad to keep the CNN bureau open because doing so might have jeopardised Iraqi lives.
In the mid-1990s, one of CNN's Iraqi cameramen was abducted and subjected to electro-shock torture in a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's "ludicrous" suspicion that Jordan was working for the CIA. CNN knew that reporting the torture of one of its employees would "almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk", said Jordan - so it didn't.
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Attempts by American legislators to punish France and Germany for their refusal to back the US-led invasion of Iraq continue, even to the extent of helping to stall funding for the war.
A provision inserted by Republican senator Ted Stevens of Arkansas, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, into President Bush's $80 billion supplemental war budget would ban the German-owned overnight delivery service, DHL Worldwide, from handling Pentagon cargoes.
Lobbyists from two rivals of DHL, FedEx and Parcel Service of America, naturally supported the measure, but the provision could jeopardise some big deals by DHL in the US which would benefit American companies. Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, expressed concern that it could harm plans by an American unit of DHL's owner, Deutsche Post, to move 400 jobs to Florida.
It was much easier just making anti-German jokes and renaming French fries "freedom fries".