Conservatives often ponder why more young conservatives don't go into journalism. Here's one easy reason: The path to prizes and prestige doesn't come from fierce investigative probing into liberal sacred cows or sharp-eyed conservative commentary. It comes from pleasing liberals with stories that advance their agenda.

The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes must have been a sad affair, what with no major prize for exposing and ruining an anti-terrorism program, and no major natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina to blame on President Bush. But that doesn't mean the Pulitzers weren't typically political. After all, the panels of judges are stuffed with longstanding figures in the liberal media establishment.

Let's start with the Commentary prize, which was awarded to Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The official Pulitzer Prize Board's press release hailed Tucker's "courageous, clear-headed columns that evince a strong sense of morality and persuasive knowledge of the community." Translation: She's liberal, and she hates George Bush.

Stephen Spruiell of National Review quickly found one recent column that complained: "There are plenty of unindicted liars walking the halls of the Bush White House. ... The Bush team knew they could never have sold American voters on an invasion of Iraq just because Saddam had illicit weapons. So they decided to distort, dissemble and lie."

What precisely is noteworthy in that? Hasn't that been said by every radical left-wing blogger with a modem?

What is noteworthy, perhaps, is the Pulitzer Prize committee standards. As with every other radical left-winger, Tucker can't deliver a shred of evidence to support the accusation of a presidential "lie."

Any conservative student who aspires to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist should really try another line of work. Here's the list since George Will won in 1977 and William Safire won in 1978: Charles Krauthammer in 1987, Paul Gigot in 2000 and Dorothy Rabinowitz in 2001. That's five conservatives in 30 years.

Three of the last five winners -- Tucker, Leonard Pitts and Colbert King -- were leftist black columnists. William Raspberry and E.R. Shipp have also won. But the Pulitzer Prize glorifiers have never honored Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams, or other black conservatives. Continued...