More awards the Enquirer didn't win

The George Polk Awards are very pretigious, though less well known than the Pulitzers. Big newspapers won awards here, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. But small papers won as well: The Hartford Courant for military reporting (the Enquirer has yet to send any member of its staff to Iraq or Afghanistan), the Baltimore Sun for medical reporting, the Portland Oregonian for national reporting, even the free weekly Lakefront Outlook near Chicago for local reporting and the High Country News in Colorado for political reporting. The Enquirer simply has no tradition of aggressive go-get-'em reporting. It has never won a Polk. The only Pulitzer in its 150-plus year history went to cartoonist Jim Borgman in 1991. Borgman has also been a finalist three times.

So what does this leave the Enquirer to celebrate? Web traffic! An email to staff last week touted the great traffic on Cincinnati.com during the storm: "Daily page views at Cincinnati.Com topped more than 3.5 million for a second day in a week! Audiences swarmed to the site to find news and information to help them cope with the snow and/or ice storms on Feb. 6 and Feb. 13. The 3.5 million page views far surpassed the previous record of 2.6 million page views the day after last November’s general election. ... And there’s more: Online users also had submitted 147 winter photos by Wednesday morning, making the snowstorms the most successful solicitation since GP! was introduced on NKY.com in August 2005. Our previous best was 108 in the December 2005 holiday photo contest - and it had prizes attached. In addition, we passed the 10,000 mark for Get Published! submitters!"

When the Pulitzer or Polk committees start awarding prizes for "best coverage of a snow day," the Enquirer will clean up.