The staffs of the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of mass shootings in their respective communities. The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s The Advocate also received journalism’s most prestigious award.
The Sun Sentinel’s coverage of “failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School” won the Pulitzer for Public Service. The February 14th, 2018 shooting at the school left 17 dead and injured 17.
Journalists at the Post-Gazette won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Reporting for their “immersive, compassionate coverage” of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 and injured 7 in the worst attack against Jews in U.S. history on October 27, 2018.
Both Nikolas Cruz, the suspected Florida shooter, and Robert Gregory Bowers, who police say carried out the Pittsburgh attack, face a slew of state and federal charges.
Matt Hamilton, Paul Pringle, and Harriet Ryan How's the Los Angeles Times won the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for uncovering more than two decades of abuse complaints against George Tyndall, a campus gynecologist at the University of Southern California.
President Donald Trump, who has declared the press to be “the enemy of the people”. was the focal point of winning entries by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of The New York Times won the Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting for their investigation of Trump’s finances that “debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.”
In their reporting that won the Pulitzer for National Reporting, The Journal’s staff uncovered Trump’s payments to two women who claimed to have had affairs with him and the network of facilitators who arranged them. The Journal’s stories triggered several criminal investigations into Trump’s personal and business practices.
The Baton Rouge Advocate earned the Pulitzer for Local Reporting for “a damning portrayal of the state’s discriminatory conviction system, including a Jim Crow-era law, that enabled Louisiana courts to send defendants to jail without jury consensus on the accused’s guilt.”
Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty of Associated Press won the Pulitzer for International Reporting as did the staff of Reuters with “notable contributions from Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.” The A.P. award stems from the wire service’s year-long investigation into the war in Yemen.
Reuters’ coverage of the abuse of the Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar exposed the military units and the Buddhist villagers responsible for “the systematic expulsion and murder of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, courageous coverage that landed its reporters in prison.” Lone and Oo have been held in a Myanmar prison since 2017, defying international pressure for their release.
Other winners include Hannah Dreier of ProPublica whose story on a botched crackdown on MS-13 captured the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
Brent Staples of The New York Times won the Pulitzer for Editorial Writing. Carlos Lozada from the Washington Post took home the Pulitzer for Criticism while The St. Louis Post-Dispatch received the Pulitzer for Commentary. The Pulitzers also awarded a Special Citation to the staff of the Capital Gazette for "their courageous response to the largest killing of journalists in U.S. history in their newsroom on June 28, 2018, and for demonstrating (an) unflagging commitment to covering the news and serving their community at a time of unspeakable grief."
