Barbara Davidson has snagged the Pulitzer Prize for her photo essay Stray Bullets. [Click here for the portfolio.] It’s your basic black and white gun crime sucks for black people series—and none the less powerful for it. But it seems the LA Times was reluctant to commission it out of concern for, wait for it, balance. “Ms. Davidson first had to persuade her editors of the relevance of victims’ stories at a time when the violent crime rate was generally in decline,” lens.blogs.nytimes.com reports. “Even one person being impacted by this is incredibly wrong,” she told the NY Times. “The numbers don’t matter. This is not a story about statistics. This is a story about the families that have been altered for the rest of their lives because of these incredibly unjust things that have happened to them.” Given that the shootings are unintentional, one wonders if “unjust” is le mot juste.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. I had a hard time finding a picture that didn’t include the phrase “gang-related” or some variant. It seems we need some Commonsense Gang Control.

  2. “Even one person being impacted by this is incredibly wrong,” she told the NY Times. “The numbers don’t matter. This is not a story about statistics.”

    Evidently she does not know how numbers work.

  4. “The numbers don’t matter. This is not a story about statistics.”

    I’m not going to bore you with “facts”, I won’t waste your time with “reality”.

    Regardless of your position, this is art, not journalism. Pulitzers go to journalists.

  5. “The numbers don’t matter. This is not a story about statistics.”

    Great, because if I have to watch one more 20-minute video on the statistical analysis of “MOA,” I’m gonna get medieval on someone’s ass.

    Oops. That didn’t come out exactly right.

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