The list of Pulitzer Prize winners this year featured many recognizable names — The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post. But one that readers might be less familiar with is the Invisible Institute.
The Chicago-based nonprofit won two Pulitzers Monday, one in Local Reporting for an investigation into how city police handle missing person cases involving Black women and girls, and another in Audio Reporting for a podcast revisiting a 1997 hate crime in the city’s South Side. This year’s wins mean the 13-person Invisible Institute has now received four nods from the Pulitzer board in just four years; it previously won a Pulitzer in National Reporting and was a finalist in Audio Reporting in 2021.
Both of the winning works from this year were done in collaboration with other organizations. The reporting series was a partnership with City Bureau, a nonprofit newsroom based in Chicago, and the podcast was co-produced with USG Audio, a division of Universal Studio Group. Collaboration has been a central part of Invisible Institute’s work and history, which started out of the work of its founder, journalist and activist Jamie Kalven.
While reporting on public housing in Chicago in the early 2000s, Kalven observed repeated police abuse. His subsequent investigations into Chicago police eventually led him to sue the city for records on police misconduct. Kalven won the case in 2014, and Invisible Institute incorporated as a nonprofit the following year to pursue journalism related to the newly available police records.
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The Invisible Institute focuses on human rights reporting, and what sets it apart, according to executive director Andrew Fan, is that it works with people outside journalism. The relationships the institute has across Chicago are central to its reporting, he said.
“We’re a small team of reporters, but also we have civil rights lawyers and data scientists and people who are focused on working with young people and doing engagement and building relationships,” Fan said. “And we think all those pieces matter.
“Our work, I think, is defined by using this variety of skills, using our deep community relationships to consistently report on criminal justice, broadly, but with a focus on Chicago and with a focus on policing.”
Throughout its history, the institute has partnered with other organizations to publish its investigations. A few years ago, the institute worked with The Marshall Project, AL.com and The Indianapolis Star on a series about police dogs that won the 2021 Pulitzer in National Reporting. That year, the institute was named a finalist for the Audio Reporting Pulitzer for a podcast co-produced with Topic Studios and The Intercept about a Chicago mother’s quest to find out what happened to her murdered son.
On Monday, roughly two dozen people from Invisible Institute and City Bureau crammed into the institute’s “tiny little office” to watch the Pulitzer Prize announcements, Fan said. Hearing that the institute won two Pulitzers was “shocking.”
Shirley Enoch-Hill sits with Sonya Rouse’s granddaughter and a portrait of Rouse, a Black woman who disappeared from her Chatham home in 2016 and whose case remains unsolved. (Photo: Natasha Moustache)
One of the Pulitzers went to a project that had been several years in the making. For their series “Missing in Chicago,” Invisible Institute data director trina reynolds-tyler and City Bureau senior reporter Sarah Conway spent two years investigating the ways Chicago police had mishandled the cases of missing Black women and girls and mistreated those victims’ family members. The series grew out of a project reynolds-tyler started in 2019, using machine learning to categorize official police complaint narratives.
“Already distrustful of police due to decades of racial profiling and abuse — including a legacy of police torture and a federal investigation that led to a still-active court-mandated reform plan — Black Chicagoans say that police do not act urgently or sufficiently to find their missing loved ones,” the investigation reads.
In the six months since the investigation’s publication, the institute has held reading groups for community members to go through the reporting with the journalists, Fan said. Last week, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and nine aldermen proposed a resolution to create a task force to look into missing persons.
Jamie Kalven, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Yohance Lacour and others at Invisible Institute discussing the “You Didn’t See Nothin” podcast. (Photo: Bill Healy/Invisible Institute)
The other Pulitzer went to the podcast “You Didn’t See Nothin,” which is hosted by Invisible Institute writer Yohance Lacour. Described as “part investigation and part memoir,” the audio series centers around the 1997 beating of Lenard Clark, who was attacked and put in a coma by a group of older white teenagers.
Lacour was in his early 20s when the attack occurred, and it drove him to pursue investigative journalism. But he became disillusioned while reporting on the attack. Nearly 25 years later, and three years after serving a 10-year prison sentence, Lacour returned to Clark’s case via the podcast.
“You Didn’t See Nothin is a combination of investigative journalism and memoir, but there’s a particular theme underscored by both. Justice. What is it?” Lacour wrote in a February reflection about the podcast.
Fan called Lacour a “fantastic storyteller” and said he hopes the podcast causes people to wrestle with a story that doesn’t have easy answers.
“Something the podcast does is think about the idea of racial reconciliation and what it really means to build relationships and trust and understanding and forgiveness across racial divides, across deep racial injustice in a place like Chicago,” Fan said. “I hope that listeners also think about what that means in their own lives.”
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