“I believe in miracles/

I believe in a better world/

for me and you.”

— The Ramones

As a poulet surprise-winning journalist myself, I avidly follow the annual announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes.

Cass County Farm Bureau awarded me my poulet surprise — an egg — many moons ago.

Journalism has changed enough to be unrecognizable to that slower, simpler time, but so have the Pulitzers in notable ways.

Perusing Editor and Publisher, I learned that not only did the national reporting winner’s series of stories tackle the timely topic of how greedy, unpatriotic Wall Street bankers wrecked the entire American economy trying to maximize their already considerable personal wealth, but it is the first prize awarded to stories never published in print.

The staff of the Los Angeles Times won the public service prize for something so egregious in the pantheon of public corruption that I have written about it, if you remember Bell, Calif., where the city manager enriched himself with a $1.5 million salary and benefits package in a struggling town of 37,000 where one in six residents live in poverty while the council members pulled down part-time pay in six figures.

They’re awaiting trial on fraud charges after voters threw them out in March.

Another amazing tidbit about the 2011 Pulitzers, besides the Chicago Sun-Times garnering its first (for local reporting) in 22 years, is that for the first time in the Pulitzer’s 95-year history, no award was made for breaking news — in the same year as the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Haiti earthquake, to name two.

Guess they really do want papers digging up their own backyards.

Three finalists included the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the deaths of two firefighters killed while searching for squatters in an abandoned building; The Tennessean for its flood coverage, which must make the waterlogged locale an early frontrunner for next year; and The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald for combined Haitian quake coverage.

Three Washington Post photographers shared the Pulitzer for breaking news photography in Haiti. Carol Guzy became the first journalist ever with four.

There were 31 entries, compared to 151 for local reporting.

The most inspiring moment for those of us who toil in relative anonymity came in the investigative reporting column, where we imagine Paige St. John’s exhilaration at winning in Sarasota.

In a 10-page E&P package where one of the most remarkable photos isn’t from a winning photographer’s portfolio, but the mere enormity of the New York Times’ vast two-floor newsroom assembled to listen to Executive Editor Bill Keller announce Clifford J. Levy’s (second) and Ellen Barry’s international reporting victory for a nine-part “Above the Law” series about Russia, the Florida paper is identified as both the Herald-Times and the Herald-Tribune.

It’s way cool that in March Editor Matthew Doig posted a job description muckraking Mother Jones tabbed “the best journalism-job want ad ever.”

Doig wrote that he dreams “that one day Walt Bogdanich will have to say, ‘I can’t believe the Sarasota Whatever-Tribune cost me my 20th Pulitzer.’ ”

I heard the New York Times investigative reporter speak years ago when he was still at The (Plain) Dealer in Cleveland, another paper I love to read.

St. John devoted two years digging into Florida’s property insurance crisis despite a dearth of recent natural disasters. Even Hurricane Ike cooperated.

But back to the unprinted national reporting entry from Jesse Eisenger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica using digital media to help explain the complex economic meltdown.

The non-profit news organization, formed in 2007, won the previous year for an overwhelmed hospital staff during Hurricane Katrina.

As a blogger summed up, proof that “the Internet isn’t just for porn.”

Otherwise, though, online-only local Web sites went home empty-handed, from WikiLeaks to MinnPost.

So did political outposts such as Huffington Post and Politico.

The Wall Street Journal won its first Pulitzer since Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (think Fox) bought it in 2007.

Joseph Rago won for editorial writing by challenging health care reform President Obama advocates.

It’s riveting how close Sun-Times photographer John J. Kim and reporters Mark Konkol and Frank Main came to missing their date with destiny.

Getting the entry postmarked by Feb. 1, which coincided with one of the biggest snowstorms to sock Chicago in years, proved almost as daunting as the “no snitch” code they fought following homicide detectives trying to solve the gang-related murder of a teenager.

Real journalism matters.

It gets a great audience response when Sarah Palin disparages the “lamestream media,” but I’m not sure her heart’s in it since she is so careful to give real reporters a wide berth.

The main difference between a poulet surprise and a Pulitzer Prize is that with the latter you usually don’t end up with egg on your face.

It is, however, the 30th anniversary of the Washington Post having to return the 1981 Pulitzer for feature writing won by Janet Cooke.

Cooke, just 26, won for “Jimmy’s World,” a fabrication about a third-generation drug addict, 8, hooked on heroin since he was 5.

The paper responsible for Deep Throat and All the President’s Men publicly apologized.