ProPublica wins Pulitzer Prize in public service journalism

The prestigious public service award went to ProPublica for reporting that “pierced the thick wall of secrecy” around the US Supreme Court to show how billionaires gave expensive gifts to justices and paid for luxury travel. Reporters Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski, and Kirsten Berg were honored for their work.
Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the aftermath produced work that resulted in two Pulitzers and a special citation. The Times won for text coverage that the Pulitzer board described as “wide-ranging and revelatory,” while the Reuters news service won for its photography. The citation went to journalists and other writers covering the war in Gaza.
NEW YORK — The New York Times and The Washington Post were awarded three Pulitzer Prizes apiece on Monday for work in 2023 that dealt with everything from the war in Gaza to gun violence.
Advertisement
The Pulitzers honored the best in journalism from 2023 in 15 categories, as well as eight arts categories focused on books, music, and theater. The public service winner receives a gold medal. All other winners receive $15,000.
The Associated Press won in the feature photography category for coverage of global migration to the United States. The 15 photos in winning entry were taken across Latin America and along the Mexico border in Texas and California in a year when immigration was one of the world’s biggest stories. They were shot by staffers Greg Bull, Eric Gay, Fernando Llano, Marco Ugarte, and Eduardo Verdugo, and longtime AP freelancers Christian Chavez, Felix Marquez, and Ivan Valencia.
The United States has seen more than 10 million border arrivals in the last five years, with migrants arriving from a wide range of new locations like Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, and Africa, in contrast with earlier eras.
In citing the Times for its work in Israel and Gaza, the Pulitzer board mentioned its coverage of the country’s intelligence failures, along with the attack and Israel’s military response.
Advertisement
The award comes as the Times has faced some controversy about its coverage; last month a group of journalism professors called on the publication to address questions about an investigation into gender-based violence during the Hamas attack on Israel.
The Times’s Hannah Dreier won a Pulitzer in investigative reporting for her stories on migrant child labor across the United States. Contributing writer Katie Engelhart won the newspaper’s third Pulitzer, in feature writing, for her portrait of a family struggling with a matriarch’s dementia.
The Washington Post staff was honored in national reporting for its “sobering examination” of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, which came with some gut-wrenching photos. “We were eager to find a way to cover it differently and change the conversation about mass shootings,” Peter Walstein, the Post’s senior national enterprise editor, said in the newspaper.
The Post’s David E. Hoffman won in editorial writing for a “compelling and well-researched” series on how authoritarian regimes repress dissent in the digital age. Its third award went to contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza, for commentaries written from a Russian prison cell.
The New Yorker magazine earned two Pulitzers. Sarah Stillman won in explanatory reporting for her report on the legal system’s reliance on felony murder charges. Contributor Medar de la Cruz won in illustrated reporting and commentary for his story humanizing inmates in the Rikers Island jail in New York City.
Advertisement
The staff of Lookout Santa Cruz in California won in the breaking news category for what the prize board called “nimble community-minded coverage” of flooding and mudslides. On its website Monday, Lookout Santa Cruz said that it made its coverage free at a time of crisis in the community, and also used text messages to reach people without power.
The Pulitzers gave a second award in national reporting to the Reuters staff for an “eye-opening” series that probed Elon Musk’s automobile and aerospace businesses.
In local reporting, Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute won for an investigative series on missing Black girls and women in Chicago, which showed how racism and the police contributed to the problem.
The Pulitzer in criticism went to Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times for evocative and genre-spanning coverage of movies. The Pulitzer board’s second special citation went to the late hip-hop critic Greg Tate.
In the prizes for arts and letters, the Pulitzer board recognized several works addressing the Black experience in America.
“King: A Life,” a biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by Jonathan Eig, shared the award for biography with “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom,” by Ilyon Woo, an account of slaves who escaped Georgia in 1848 and became leading abolitionists in the North. The history prize went to Jacqueline Jones for “No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era.”
Advertisement
The Middle East conflict figured in the prize for general nonfiction, which was awarded to “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” by Nathan Thrall, which profiles a Palestinian father in the West Bank whose young child dies in a school bus crash.
A saxophone concerto by Tyshawn Sorey won the music prize. “Night Watch,” a novel by Jayne Anne Phillips set in the aftermath of the Civil War, won for fiction. “Primary Trust,” a play by Eboni Booth, won the drama prize. And the prize for memoir was awarded to Cristina Rivera Garza for “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” an account of the murder of the author’s sister.
The Pulitzers are administered by Columbia University in New York, which itself has been in the news for student demonstrations against the war in Gaza. The Pulitzer board met away from Columbia this past weekend to deliberate on its winners.
For the first time, the Pulitzers opened eligibility to broadcast and audio companies that also operate digital news sites, such as CNN, NPR, and the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. None of these companies won, however.
The Pulitzers also announced that five of the 45 finalists this year used artificial intelligence in research and reporting of their submissions. It was the first time the board required applicants for the award to disclose use of AI.
The prizes were established in the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer and first awarded in 1917.
Advertisement
Material from The New York Times was used in this report.