The honor is already there

I'm sitting at my desk at 1:30 p.m. central time, a short 30 minutes before this year's Pulitzer Prize winners are announced.

While it's always interesting to see who wins, this year is different: The Gazette, the paper I work for, is one of the contenders.

We are up against some pretty tough competition, for sure. How will the Great Flood of 2008, which wiped out homes for thousands of people, rate against President Obama's race relations speech and the presidential campaign, or the financial meltdown, or the ongoing stories on the war in Iraq?

I don't know.

And the truth is, it doesn't matter. Sure, working for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper would be an enormous honor. But so is working for a team of editors who believe that our stuff -- what we as a collective unit did during the flood and in the many months after -- is Pulitzer worthy.

Now we just wait. Nineteen minutes and counting.