I look forward to the Pulitzers’ announcement each year, mostly to see what stories are honored and if any of my friends wrote them. (It’s happened a few times.)

Yesterday was no different. Learning that the Pulitzers were out, I searched the Internet for a list of winners with the same old giddiness.

A few winners surprised me: the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz.; and the Las Vegas Sun. Who knew? But there, at the head of the winner’s table, was Old Faithful — the New York Times. The paper once known as the Gray Lady had grabbed five Pulitzers, a near historic haul. (It won seven in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The Los Angeles Times won five one year, while the Washington Post won six last year.)

The Pulitzers the New York Times won this year are for what the paper excels at — in-depth journalism in the international and investigative categories. It also won for flooding the zone during the lightning-strike confession and resignation of then-N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer because of his clandestine hook-ups with call girls.

Rarely a year goes by that the New York Times does not win at least one Pulitzer. One year — 2000, I think — the Times was skunked. I hear that caused some soul-searching in the newsroom.

So I imagine yesterday the New York Times newsroom was jubilant.

But I can’t help but wonder if a bittersweet feeling hung over the revelry. As much as the Pulitzer fever gripped me yesterday, the event also felt a tad funereal. I don’t mean to pile on the bad news for newspapers during this really rough patch, but I’ve never seen as many papers fold,  or for that matter layoff or furlough employees or freeze pensions or stop 401K contributions. This is a bad time for newspapers. And the New York Times is no exception. A day after nabbing five Pulitzers, the company that owns the Times announced that it had lost $74.5 million in the first quarter of this year.

Here’s an excerpt from an AP story:

The owner of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and 15 other daily newspapers said Tuesday that it lost $74.5 million, or 52 cents per share, in the opening three months of the year. That compared with a loss of $335,000 at the same time last year, which was break-even on a per-share basis.

A little later, the story says the Times already has taken cost savings measures:

Most of the company’s employees in New York are facing a temporary 5 percent reduction in their paychecks through the remainder of the year, and management is demanding even bigger concessions at the company’s next-largest U.S. newspaper, The Boston Globe.

If it can’t wring $20 million in employee concessions from the Globe by early May, the Times Co. has threatened to shut down the newspaper to avoid further losses. After suffering a loss of about $50 million last year, The Boston Globe is on a pace to lose $85 million this year.

This is a perilous time for newspapers of all types — the really good and the really bad. The financial crisis is hitting them all and not distinguishing between the ones that perform a public service and those that have put out a mediocre product for decades in order to squeeze more profits out of their operations.

In a few years, online media might be able to attempt to fill the gap if newspapers pull back, but it’s going to require a lot of growing up.

Here’s to hoping the New York Times, and other papers that match their statements about public service with actual deeds, survive this financial crisis largely intact. If not, we’re all going to lose.