I followed the link to the Pulitzer biography to find out more about him, and I was reminded of the movie Citizen Kane. After reading a bit farther, I discovered why — Pulizer was a contemporary of William Randolph Hearst and one of his primary competitors in the newspaper business. Kane was a caricature of Hearst, who was famous for ‘yellow journalism’ and fabrication of stories. Competition with Hearst was probably a major source of his own paper’s sensationalism, but after their attempts to whip up indignation in the populace resulted in a war with Spain, Pulitzer swore off ‘yellow journalism.’

Both of these men, Nobel and Pulitzer, had their intentions in the right place and focused their work on the betterment of society. Although there is a little bit of irony in the fact that awards are named after them when their own lives demonstrated a few things contrary to the spirit of those awards, I think their positive achievements and influences on socity far outweigh the negative.

Bill Gates has a lot of reforming to do before anyone will take an award in his name for fair business practices seriously. I don’t think it’s going to happen.