Great piece in the Phoenix on the significance of the Boston Globe Pulitzer win:

Savage’s win highlights the poverty of such reasoning. Plenty of national-news organizations (the Times, the Post, Newsweek, CNN, etc.) could have broken the signing-statement story. None of them did — and if not for the Globe, it might never have been reported. Excellent regional papers like the Globe might benefit financially by reducing their own sense of mission. But the journalistic implications of such reductions shouldn’t be sugarcoated.

“It’s really important for our society that we maintain a diversity of newsgathering thought in Washington,” Savage tells the Phoenix. “Sometimes, it takes a bit of an outsider perspective to recognize that something that’s been going on in the past is worth talking about. And I hope that as the industry contracts, and we go through this painful transitional period, we come out on the other side with regional papers having their Washington newsgathering operations intact.”

Peter Canellos, the Globe’s Washington bureau chief, makes a corollary argument — namely, that national legal issues like those explored in Savage’s coverage have an intrinsic connection to Boston. “Boston really is the engine of legal thought for the entire country, in many ways,” Canellos says. “The American Bar Association president [Michael S. Greco] who ordered the investigation of signing statements is from Wellesley. We believe that these people are Globe readers, and that in covering the Justice Department and the legal aspects of the presidency, we’re addressing a local constituency.” Put these two arguments together, throw in Savage’s Pulitzer, and the Globe should be well-equipped to fend off future suggestions from the New York Times Company, its corporate parent, that the paper scale back its operations in the nation’s capitol.