The 2022 Pulitzer Prizes were announced Monday from Columbia University. Here are the winners.
Public Service:
Awarded to The Washington Post for its compellingly told and vividly presented account of the assault on Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, providing the public with a thorough and unflinching understanding of one of the nation’s darkest days.
Finalists:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The New York Times
Breaking News Reporting:
Awarded to the staff of the Miami Herald for its coverage of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex, merging clear and compassionate writing with comprehensive news and accountability reporting.
Finalists:
Staff of the Los Angeles Times
Staff of The New York Times
Investigative Reporting:
Awarded to Corey G. Johnson, Rebecca Woolington and Eli Murray of the Tampa Bay Times for a compelling exposé of highly toxic hazards inside Florida’s only battery recycling plant that forced the implementation of safety measures to adequately protect workers and nearby residents.
Finalists:
Hannah Dreier and Andrew Ba Tran of The Washington Post
Jeffrey Meitrodt and Nicole Norfleet of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn.
Explanatory Reporting:
Awarded to the staff of Quanta Magazine, and notably Natalie Wolchover, for coverage that revealed the complexities of building the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to facilitate groundbreaking astronomical and cosmological research.
Finalists:
Staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer
Staff of The Wall Street Journal
Local Reporting:
Awarded to Madison Hopkins of the Better Government Association and Cecilia Reyes of the Chicago Tribune for a piercing examination of the city’s long history of failed building- and fire-safety code enforcement, which let scofflaw landlords commit serious violations that resulted in dozens of unnecessary deaths.
Finalists:
Lulu Ramadan of The Palm Beach Post and Ash Ngu, Maya Miller and Nadia Sussman of ProPublica
Tony Cook, Johnny Magdaleno and Michelle Pemberton of The Indianapolis Star
RELATED TRAINING: Enroll in Poynter’s Summit for Reporters and Editors with Tom Huang by June 17, 2022.
National Reporting:
Awarded to the staff of The New York Times for an ambitious project that quantified a disturbing pattern of fatal traffic stops by police, illustrating how hundreds of deaths could have been avoided and how officers typically avoided punishment.
Finalists:
Eli Hager of The Marshall Project and Joseph Shapiro, contributor, of National Public Radio
Staff of The Washington Post
International Reporting:
Awarded to the staff of The New York Times for courageous and relentless reporting that exposed the vast civilian toll of U.S.-led airstrikes, challenging official accounts of American military engagements in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Finalists:
Staff of The New York Times
Staff of The New York Times
Yaroslav Trofimov and the Staff of The Wall Street Journal
Feature Writing:
Awarded to Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic for an unflinching portrait of a family’s reckoning with loss in the 20 years since 9/11, masterfully braiding the author’s personal connection to the story with sensitive reporting that reveals the long reach of grief.
Finalists:
Anand Gopal, contributing writer, The New Yorker
Meribah Knight of WPLN, contributor, and Ken Armstrong of ProPublica
Commentary:
Awarded to Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star for persuasive columns demanding justice for alleged victims of a retired police detective accused of being a sexual predator.
Finalists:
Julian Aguon, freelance contributor, The Atlantic
Zeynep Tufekci, for columns published in The New York Times and The Atlantic
Criticism:
Awarded to Salamishah Tillet, contributing critic at large, The New York Times, for learned and stylish writing about Black stories in art and popular culture —- work that successfully bridges academic and nonacademic critical discourse.
Finalists:
Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker
Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic
Editorial Writing:
Awarded to Lisa Falkenberg, Michael Lindenberger, Joe Holley and Luis Carrasco of the Houston Chronicle for a campaign that, with original reporting, revealed voter suppression tactics, rejected the myth of widespread voter fraud and argued for sensible voting reforms.
Finalists:
Abdallah Fayyad of The Boston Globe
Editorial Staff of The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
Illustrated Reporting and Commentary:
Awarded to Fahmida Azim, Anthony Del Col, Josh Adams and Walt Hickey of Insider for using graphic reportage and the comics medium to tell a powerful yet intimate story of the Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs, making the issue accessible to a wider public.
Finalists:
Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post
Zoe Si, contributor, The New Yorker
Breaking News Photography:
Awarded to Marcus Yam of the Los Angeles Times for raw and urgent images of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan that capture the human cost of the historic change in the country.
Awarded to Win McNamee, Drew Angerer, Spencer Platt, Samuel Corum and Jon Cherry of Getty Images for comprehensive and consistently riveting photos of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Finalist:
Anonymous, freelance contributor, The New York Times
Feature Photography:
Awarded to Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Amit Dave and the late Danish Siddiqui of Reuters for images of COVID’s toll in India that balanced intimacy and devastation, while offering viewers a heightened sense of place.
Finalists:
Gabrielle Lurie of the San Francisco Chronicle
Photography Staff of Reuters
Audio Reporting:
Awarded to the staffs of Futuro Media in New York and PRX in Boston for “Suave,” a brutally honest and immersive profile of a young man reentering society after serving more than 30 years in prison.
Finalists:
Eyder Peralta, Solomon Fisseha, Alsanosi Adam and Halima Athumani of National Public Radio
Mike Hixenbaugh, Antonia Hylton, Frannie Kelley, Reid Cherlin and Julie Shapiro of NBC News
Special Citation:
Awarded to the journalists of Ukraine for their courage, endurance and commitment to truthful reporting during Vladimir Putin’s ruthless invasion of their country and his propaganda war in Russia. Despite bombardment, abductions, occupation and even deaths in their ranks, they have persisted in their effort to provide an accurate picture of a terrible reality, doing honor to Ukraine and to journalists around the world.
Letters, Drama and Music
Fiction:
Awarded to “The Netanyhus,” by Joshua Cohen, a mordant, linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities of the Jewish-American experience, presenting ideas and disputes as volatile as its tightly-wound plot.
Finalists:
“Monkey Boy,” by Francisco Goldman (Grove Press)
“Palmares,” by Gayl Jones (Beacon Press)
General Nonfiction:
Awarded to: “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City,” by Andrea Elliott, an affecting, deeply reported account of a girl who comes of age during New York City’s homeless crisis – a portrait of resilience amid institutional failure that successfully merges literary narrative with policy analysis.
Finalists:
“Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism,” by Carla Power (One World/Random House)
“The Family Roe: An American Story,” by Joshua Prager (W. W. Norton & Company)
History:
Awarded to “Covered With Night,” by Nicole Eustance, a gripping account of Indigenous justice in early America, and how the aftermath of a settler’s murder led to the oldest continuously recognized treaty in the United States.
Awarded to “Cuba: An American History,” by Ada Ferrer, an original and compelling history, spanning five centuries, of the island that became an obsession for many presidents and policy makers, transforming how we think of U.S. in Latin America, and Cuba in American society.
Finalist:
“Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction,” by Kate Masur (W. W. Norton & Company)
Biography:
Awarded to “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South,” by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly, a sharp and searing first-person account of an artist’s life during the 1950s and 1960s in an unreconstructed corner of the deep South- an account of abuse, endurance, imagination, and aesthetic transformation.
Finalists:
“Pessoa: A Biography,” by Richard Zenith (Liveright/Norton)
“The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine,” by Janice P. Nimura (W. W. Norton & Company)
Poetry:
Awarded to “frank: sonnets,” by Diane Seuss, a virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to congruent the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt.
Finalists:
“Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten,” by Will Alexander (New Directions)
“Yellow Rain,” by Mai Der Vang (Graywolf Press)
Drama:
Awarded to “Fat Ham,” by James Ijames, a funny, poignant play that deftly transposes Hamlet to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.
Finalists:
“Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord,” by Kristina Wong
“Selling Kabul,” by Sylvia Khoury
Music:
Awarded to “Voiceless Mass,” by Raven Chacon, premiered on November 21, 2021 at the United Church of Christ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a mesmerizing, original work for organ and ensemble that evokes the weight of history in a church setting, a concentrated and powerful musical expression with a haunting visceral impact.
Finalists:
“Seven Pillars,” by Andy Akiho
“with eyes the color of time,” by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti
RELATED:
- Analysis: Poynter’s Tom Jones breaks down this year’s Pulitzer Prizes
- Ukrainian journalists win special Pulitzer citation
- An all-out reporting effort wins The Washington Post the Public Service Pulitzer for its January 6 coverage
- Local news Pulitzer winners highlight value of community reporting
- This 10-year-old online science magazine just won its first Pulitzer
- The most impressive Pulitzer Prize of all?
- From the archives: Behind the Pulitzers: A look into the inner workings of journalism’s Super Bowl
- From the archives: How do you pronounce Pulitzer?
