The New York Times, Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica win Pulitzers

Pulitzer Prizes were awarded Monday to news organisations that delved into corruption, law enforcement and the legacy of racism in the United States, recognising journalists’ examinations of inequality and other societal ills.

The New York Times led all outlets with three prizes. The New Yorker won two, and nonprofit outlet ProPublica took one award and shared another.

The award for public service, considered the most prestigious of the Pulitzers, went to The Anchorage Daily News, which collaborated with ProPublica for a yearlong investigation of sexual violence in Alaska.

The series uncovered a “two-tiered” criminal justice system in the state, in which rural communities, disproportionately populated by indigenous people, had limited or no access to law enforcement and four times as many sex offenders as the United States’ per-capita national average.

“This shows what’s possible in a small newsroom,” said David Hulen, editor of The Anchorage Daily News, in a phone interview Monday.

The Daily News has about 30 journalists working in its newsroom, Hulen said. It joined with ProPublica as part of an initiative called the Local Reporting Network.

“In this case, it was really possible because of the partnership with ProPublica,” Hulen said. “That’s part of the new way media can work these days, through collaboration.”

It was the third Pulitzer for public service for The Anchorage Daily News.

The awards for The Times came in the categories of commentary, investigative journalism and international reporting.

The commentary award went to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, for her essay that served as the leading piece in The 1619 Project, a series centred on reframing US history by focusing on the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans. The project, led by Hannah-Jones, included a broadsheet section and a podcast.

“One of the most ambitious acts of journalism in years,” Dean Baquet, The Times’ executive editor, told the staff Monday.

The investigative prize went to a Times examination, by Brian M. Rosenthal, of the New York City taxi industry. It found that many drivers, some of whom did not speak English, had been saddled with predatory loans that valued taxi medallions at $1 million or more, helping cause nearly a thousand medallion owners to file for bankruptcy. The series prompted the city to propose a $500 million bailout.

The board awarded its international prize to a series by Times journalists detailing Russia’s influence operations abroad, from assassinations to election-meddling, in the years following its disinformation efforts in the 2016 American presidential election.

For the first time, the Pulitzers recognized audio journalism with an award for “The Out Crowd,” a collaboration between the staff of “This American Life,” the longtime program produced by Chicago station WBEZ, and Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, a freelancer for Vice News.

The Pulitzer Prizes, first given in 1917 and presented annually by Columbia University for excellence in journalism, books, music and drama, were announced via video livestream from the living room of the Pulitzer administrator, Dana Canedy, because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last month, the Pulitzer board moved the date of the ceremony from April 20 to Monday, saying that many board members were “on the front lines of informing the public on the quickly evolving coronavirus pandemic.”

Canedy began the announcement Monday afternoon by comparing journalists to emergency responders and health care workers who were “running toward the fire.”

“Despite relentless assaults on objective truth, coordinated efforts to undermine our nation’s free press and persistent economic headwinds, journalists continue to pursue and deliver essential facts and truths to keep us safe and to protect our democracy,” she said.

Two executives at outlets that won Pulitzers — Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor-in-chief, and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker — served on the Pulitzer Prize Board. Nicole Carroll, editor-in-chief of USA Today, a Gannett paper, is also on the board.

The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, which is owned by Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the country, won the breaking news prize for its coverage of pardons of hundreds of people by Gov Matt Bevin. They included a man convicted of homicide whose brother had raised money for Bevin’s unsuccessful reelection campaign.

The family-owned Seattle Times won the national reporting prize for its coverage of Boeing. Its series found that the Federal Aviation Administration had cooperated with Boeing’s own inspectors in approving the fatally flawed flight control system of the 737 Max. One of the four reporters on the series, Mike Baker, is now the Seattle bureau chief of The New York Times.

A second national reporting prize went to three reporters at ProPublica for articles on the Navy’s 7th Fleet and fatal accidents involving the Navy and the Marines.

The New Yorker won two awards, for feature writing and editorial cartooning — the latter for Barry Blitt, whose caricatures of President Donald Trump and other political figures frequently appear on the cover. The feature prize went to Ben Taub for a story about a Guantánamo Bay inmate accused of aiding al-Qaida, who was tortured even as he maintained his innocence.

Author Colson Whitehead won in the fiction category for his novel “The Nickel Boys” — Whitehead’s second Pulitzer. Musical theater writer Michael R Jackson won the Pulitzer for drama for his musical “A Strange Loop.” W Caleb McDaniel took the award in history for his book “Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America,” and Benjamin Moser won in biography for “Sontag: Her Life and Work,” his study of writer and public intellectual Susan Sontag.

The Washington Post won for explanatory reporting for a series that used interactive maps and visual journalism to illuminate the dangers of global warming.

The prize for breaking new photography went to Reuters staff, who captured vivid images of Hong Kongers protesting against the Chinese government. Three Associated Press photojournalists won in the feature photography category for pictures of Kashmir following an Indian crackdown on the disputed territory. Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight won in the criticism category for his columns arguing against a proposal to overhaul the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The Baltimore Sun won the local reporting prize for its coverage of former Mayor Catherine Pugh. Revelations that Pugh earned $800,000 from hospitals’ and insurers’ bulk purchases of her self-published children’s book helped lead to her resignation. Pugh also pleaded guilty to federal charges.

The editorial writing prize went to Jeffery Gerritt of The Herald-Press of Palestine, Texas, 100 miles southeast of Dallas, for a series on the deaths of prisoners awaiting trial. On Friday, The Herald-Press publisher announced that the newspaper would reduce its print edition to three days a week in response to the economic downturn prompted by the coronavirus.

A special citation went to Ida B. Wells, the pioneering investigative reporter who was born into slavery and exposed the horrors of lynching in the United States through her work. — MARC TRACY

2020 WINNERS LIST

PUBLIC SERVICE

The Anchorage Daily News with contributions from ProPublica

The Anchorage Daily News, in collaboration with nonprofit outlet ProPublica, won the prestigious public service award for a yearlong investigation of sexual violence in Alaska. The series, led by reporter Kyle Hopkins, uncovered a “two-tiered” criminal justice system in the state, in which rural communities, disproportionately populated by indigenous people, had limited or no access to law enforcement and four times as many sex offenders as other areas in the United States, per capita.

Finalists: The New York Times; The Washington Post

BREAKING NEWS

Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky

The staff of The Courier-Journal uncovered how last-minute pardons by Kentucky’s outgoing governor, Matt Bevin, were made unilaterally and violated legal norms. In one case, The Courier-Journal revealed political ties to a released prisoner: His family had contributed thousands to the governor’s campaign. The paper’s reporting led to an investigation by federal agencies.

Finalists: Staff of the Los Angeles Times; staff of The Washington Post

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Brian M Rosenthal of The New York Times

Rosenthal, 31, received the award for a five-part series on how reckless loans, dispensed by a small group of taxi medallion owners, put thousands of immigrants in debt while bankers made huge profits. Rosenthal revealed that government officials allowed lenders with political connections to skirt certain regulations and chronicled the devastating effect the debt had on drivers, causing several to die by suicide. This reporting led to local, state and federal investigations.

Finalists: Jay Hancock and Elizabeth Lucas of Kaiser Health News; staff of The Wall Street Journal

EXPLANATORY REPORTING

Staff of The Washington Post

In its series “2°C: Beyond the Limit,” The Washington Post examined the disastrous effects of global warming, analysing nearly 170 years of temperature data, creating interactive maps and other visualizations, and compiling dispatches from a dozen hot spots. The sweeping reporting, which included stories about outdoor air conditioning in Qatar and fires in California, demonstrated how parts of the Earth have already warmed by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — a threshold considered dangerous by policymakers worldwide.

Finalists: Rosanna Xia, Swetha Kannan and Terry Castleman of the Los Angeles Times; staff of Reveal from the Centre for Investigative Reporting

LOCAL REPORTING

Staff of The Baltimore Sun

The staff of The Baltimore Sun was honoured for reporting that revealed that Mayor Catherine Pugh of Baltimore had no-bid contracts with the University of Maryland’s medical system to boost profits for her self-published children’s book. The reporting resulted in the mayor’s resignation and a February sentencing of three years in federal prison. The story began with a tip to Sun reporter Luke Broadwater asking him to look into contracts at the state’s hospital system. When he came across Pugh’s name on the list and hundreds of thousands of dollars for her books, he knew the story was bigger than he anticipated. “The whole newsroom activated, and everyone saw right away that this is going to be a big story, and let’s all roll,” Broadwater, 40, said in an interview.

Finalists: Peter Smith, Stephanie Strasburg and Shelly Bradbury of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; staff of The Boston Globe

NATIONAL REPORTING

T Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica

Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times

The reporting team for ProPublica’s “Disaster in the Pacific” series spent 18 months investigating several deadly accidents involving the Navy and Marines in 2017 and 2018. While the military tried to block its reporting, the team used more than 13,000 pages of confidential records and interviews with hundreds of officials, exposing a trail of outdated equipment, insufficient training and warnings ignored by senior leadership.

After 346 people died in two crashes involving Boeing’s 737 Max jet, The Seattle Times began reporting on the manufacturer’s many missteps leading to the accidents. In more than 150 stories, the reporting team described issues such as Boeing’s problematic flight control system and the flawed regulatory process that delegated safety responsibilities to the company and allowed management to take shortcuts and ignore warnings.

Finalists: Staff of The Wall Street Journal

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING

Staff of The New York Times

State-sponsored assassination campaigns; arms dealers tied to mercenaries; a military intelligence group deploying hackers to destabilise elections. It’s not the plot of a spy novel; it’s President Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia. The staff of The New York Times reported from Ukraine, Madagascar, Bulgaria, Libya and the Central African Republic of Bangui, often at risk, to uncover the many layers behind Putin’s globe-spanning operations. The stories offered riveting accounts of the spycraft coming from the Kremlin.

Finalists: Staff of The New York Times; staff of Reuters

AUDIO REPORTING

Staff of “This American Life” with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News

“This American Life” won the first Pulitzer Prize for audio journalism for an episode of “The Out Crowd.” The episode focuses on the effect of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and how it affected asylum-seekers that were awaiting help in Mexico. Molly O’Toole, an investigative reporter, interviewed asylum officers who enforced the policy at tent camps across the border. The episode also included reporting by Emily Green, who used recordings of cartels attempting to negotiate ransom for a father and son who had been kidnapped immediately after returning to Mexico.

Finalists: Andrew Beck Grace, Chip Brantley, Graham Smith, Nicole Beemsterboer and Robert Little of NPR; Nigel Poor, Earlonne Woods and Rahsaan Thomas for “Ear Hustle,” produced by inmates of San Quentin State Prison.

FEATURE WRITING

Ben Taub of The New Yorker

Taub, who joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2017, told the harrowing story of Mohamedou Salahi, an engineer who was accused of aiding al-Qaida and spent 15 years at the US detention camp in Guantánamo Bay. There, Salahi was tortured and interrogated, even as he maintained his innocence and insisted he did not hold extremist views. By turns compassionate and investigative, Taub entwined his exploration of Salahi’s plight with a broader examination of America’s yearslong war on terrorism.

Finalists: Chloé Cooper Jones, freelance reporter, The Verge; Ellen Barry of The New York Times; Nestor Ramos of The Boston Globe

COMMENTARY

Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times

Hannah-Jones, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, mixed personal anecdote and history in her essay for the magazine’s “The 1619 Project,” which sought to re-centre the contributions of African Americans, including enslaved people, to American history. The project became part of the culture war and a partisan football, with conservatives including Newt Gingrich attacking it as part of what he said was the newspaper’s campaign against President Donald Trump. Five history professors signed a letter criticizing the initiative as praiseworthy but flawed in some particulars, homing in on a few points in Hannah-Jones’s essay. In a rebuttal, Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, stood by the project.

Finalists: Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post; Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times

CRITICISM

Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times

Knight, who has been an art critic for the Los Angeles Times since 1989, was recognised for his critique of a proposal to overhaul the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In heartfelt and rigorous columns opposing the plan, Knight invoked the paramount role of the museum in his city’s urban and cultural fabric. Knight has been a finalist for the criticism prize on three occasions, in 1991, 2001 and 2007.

Finalists: Justin Davidson of New York magazine; Soraya Nadia McDonald of The Undefeated

EDITORIAL WRITING

Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Texas) Herald Press

Gerritt writes for The Herald-Press of Palestine, Texas, a town 100 miles southeast of Dallas. He was awarded for his series on deaths of pretrial inmates in jails. Of the death of one La Salle County prisoner in August 2017, a November editorial said, “An autopsy ruled Davis’ death ‘accidental,’ but like most of Texas’ annual 100-plus in-custody deaths, it stemmed from a lethal mix of negligence, incompetence, and indifference.”

Finalists: Jill Burcum of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star

EDITORIAL CARTOONING

Barry Blitt, contributor at The New Yorker

Blitt’s unflattering caricatures of President Donald Trump frequently grace The New Yorker’s covers. The judges said his cartoons skewered the Trump White House with a “deceptively sweet watercolour style.” Blitt has contributed cartoons to the pages of The New Yorker for more than 30 years. He now has a series in the online edition as well.

Finalists: Kevin Kallaugher, freelancer; Lalo Alcaraz, freelancer; Matt Bors of The Nib

BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography staff of Reuters

The photography staff of Reuters was cited for striking photographs of Hong Kong as citizens mounted mass protests against the encroachment of the Chinese government. The images of fire, tear gas and rubber bullets as riots broke out in the streets captured the escalating violence and turmoil of the clash.

Finalists: Dieu Nalio Chery and Rebecca Blackwell of Associated Press; Tom Fox of The Dallas Morning News

FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of The Associated Press

The three photographers were commended for capturing vivid images of conflict in Kashmir as India cracked down on the contested territory. The region’s residents were put under curfew, and communications were blacked out. The photographers revealed the turmoil and plight of the Kashmiri people.

Finalists: Erin Clark of The Boston Globe; Mary F. Calvert, freelance photographer

FICTION

“The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead

With this year’s Pulitzer Prize, Colson Whitehead becomes just the fourth fiction writer to win the prize twice (the others are Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike). “The Nickel Boys” reimagines the real-life horrors at a reform school in 1960s Florida. “Two heavy books in a row flowed out of me,” Whitehead, 50, said Monday. (He won for “The Underground Railroad” in 2017.) “And I was relieved to be done talking about them, actually, because they took so much energy out of me. The next book I’m working on has more jokes in it, and it does feel like those two books seem sort of remote now.”

Finalists: “The Dutch House,” by Ann Patchett; “The Topeka School,” by Ben Lerner

DRAMA

“A Strange Loop” by Michael R Jackson

Jackson, 39, is a gay, black, musical-theatre writer who wrote a musical about a gay, black, musical-theatre writer writing a musical about a gay, black, musical-theatre writer. “I was trying to speak about what it means to be a self in general, and a black and queer self in particular — just expressing the joys and sorrows of the experience of being in this particular body,” Jackson said in an interview. The musical is as zany as it sounds — daring and self-lacerating, outrageous and moving. The Times described it as “a self-portrait in an endless hall of mirrors” and called it “jubilantly anguished.” The show was produced off-Broadway last year by Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73.

Finalists: “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” by Will Arbery; “Soft Power,” by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori

HISTORY

“Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America” by W Caleb McDaniel

Henrietta Wood was born into slavery, legally freed in 1848, then abducted and sold back into bondage in 1858. She later sued her kidnapper and was awarded $2,500 — the most ever awarded by an American court as restitution for slavery. The prize jury cited McDaniel, 40, an associate professor at Rice University, for “a masterfully researched meditation on reparations.”

Finalists: “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor; “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America,” by Greg Grandin

BIOGRAPHY

“Sontag: Her Life and Work” by Benjamin Moser

Moser, 43, was cited for “an authoritatively constructed work” capturing Susan Sontag’s “genius and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities and volatile enthusiasms.” To research the book, he interviewed nearly 600 friends, enemies, relatives, editors, lovers and others to capture an intellectual who shaped our thinking about everything from art to war to disease. “I hope her legacy won’t be seen as a historical curiosity, but as something vital and ongoing,” he said.

Finalists: “Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century,” by George Packer; “Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me,” by Deirdre Bair

POETRY

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

Brown spoke Monday of being “overtaken and overwhelmed by” the process of writing his third collection. “This book wouldn’t leave me alone,” he said. “I was writing poems in elevators. I had to pull my car over to write poems. It was the most exhilarating and exhausting thing.” The book covers subjects from the Trojan War to James Baldwin to, perhaps most centrally, the often unpunished violence that police commit against African Americans. “The recognition feels good,” Brown, 44, said. “But I still have work to do. I want to continue being subversive, asking hard questions and answering them through poems.”

Finalists: “Dunce,” by Mary Ruefle; “Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems,” by Dorianne Laux

GENERAL NONFICTION

“The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care” by Anne Boyer

“The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America” by Greg Grandin

At the time of her diagnosis with an aggressive form of breast cancer, poet Anne Boyer was 41 and a single parent. In her genre-defying memoir, Boyer, now 46, chronicles her struggle to survive not just the disease, but a brutal chemotherapy regime. “To submit to it, I thought, was to feel like dying but possibly to live,” she writes. The book, which drew comparisons to Susan Sontag’s “Illness as Metaphor,” was called “extraordinary and furious” by The New York Times.

Boyer shared the award for general nonfiction with historian Greg Grandin, 57, whose book about the American frontier explores the myth of American exceptionalism. Grandin traces the country’s fervent belief in endless outward expansion and how it gave way to nationalism, racism and partisan polarisation, epitomised by the current political battle over immigration and the border wall.

Finalists: “Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life,” by Louise Aronson; “Solitary,” by Albert Woodfox with Leslie George

MUSIC

“The Central Park Five” by Anthony Davis

In this impassioned, jazz-infused opera, Davis, 69, and librettist Richard Wesley tell the story of the black teenagers wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1989 assault of a white woman in New York. The Pulitzer board praised the work, which premiered in June at Long Beach Opera, for its “powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration.” In an interview before the premiere, Davis said, “I want people to experience the opera so they identify with them, so they think they’re one of the five.”

Finalists: “and all the days were purple” by Alex Weiser; “Sky: Concerto for Violin” by Michael Torke

SPECIAL CITATION

Ida B Wells

Journalist Ida B Wells was awarded a posthumous special citation. Wells made it her life’s work to write about the racist violence in the South and to destroy the stereotype that was used as an excuse to lynch black men: that they were rapists. Wells was 30 when she set out on a reporting mission to document and investigate lynching. By talking to eyewitnesses in dozens of lynching cases, she discovered that in most lynching, rape was not an accusation. She owned and edited a newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech, and was called “The Princess of the Press” by her peers.

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