Originally Posted by
DochaDocha
Heh, nice.
I'll just post hit-and-run style since I haven't really collected my thoughts.
Whether she's won awards or not, she should be excellent at her job. The award isn't necessary to validate your greatness. Susan Lucci didn't need that Emmy, Leo didn't his Oscar, and Albert Belle didn't need the 1995 American League MVP to prove they were great at what they did. There's a lot of bureaucracy your application has to go through for you to win, and that's not really something you can influence directly simply by doing your job better. So when I originally proposed whether she should have a Pulitzer, it's not to say she should be written as a less-competent journalist. It just means she's otherwise the same (skilled) person but without the recognition from Columbia University, which, for emphasis, is not the only barometer of how good that person is at her job.
Honestly, whenever in this type of fiction they say so-and-so has been given an award, it's usually some shorthand to indicate that the character is elite on the job. You could remove it altogether from, say, Man of Steel, and practically nothing changes except you removed a clunky line of exposition. The good parts of the movie actually show us she's good at her job. Fantastic, actually; she's the only person who was able to piece together all of the clues that Clark Kent was the mystery guy (believable or not). Compare that to Superman Returns where her award-winning column on "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman?" is more telling us that she's good and is largely the extent to which journalism plays a piece in her role of the movie. As an aside, I'd prefer that if she won such an award, it would be for investigative reporting, one of the 15 categories for which Pulitzers are awarded. And since we're talking movies, I can't say Superman I, II, or IV needed that kind of exposition, either. Nobody thinks less of the character because they didn't show a bunch of plaques on her wall.
As for the specific Pulitzer itself, the application process I think influences how any story of winning the prize should be written. Someone has to submit the piece, fill out the application form, pay the $75 application fee, etc. I kind of like a story where Lois is like "I don't care about awards, just doing my job right." Or maybe when she was younger (entry-level journalists make $#!t pay... my good buddy's first job paid him <$18k for a full-time gig...) she figured it was a bad way to spend $75. I also like the idea that Perry White's general motivation is he thinks not pushing his people to win awards is a way to keep them hungry and motivated so he himself never has someone submit an application on his staffers' behalf. On the other hand, Clark Kent would absolutely do it for Lois, which I didn't think about prior to this thread, so that changes my original opinion a little.
I think if her best work got submitted routinely, she'd eventually win, but that's, of course, contingent upon submission. Also, I think I commented prior that it'd be more interesting to see her win her first award in the pages of a comic/on screen than just be introduced as X-time Pulitzer Winner, Lois Lane.