Washington Post editorial page editor David Shipley, blue shirt and tie, applauds next to Post executive editor Sally Buzbee as the Post celebrates winning three Pulitzer Prizes on Monday. (Photo: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post. Courtesy: The Washington Post)
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May 7, 2024

Monday was one of the biggest days in journalism as The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced.

This was not your typical year for the Pulitzers. The Pulitzer Board usually meets on the campus of Columbia University, which houses the Pulitzers, the week before the winners are announced to go over the finalists and make selections. But pro-Palestinian protests forced the board to move its meetings off campus. Instead of meeting at Columbia, the board met at the New York City offices of The Associated Press.

For the complete list of winners and finalists, including links to the fine work, check out this piece by my Poynter colleague Ren LaForme.

Here are some random, yet pertinent thoughts about this year’s Pulitzer Prizes:

Covering war

The world changed last Oct. 7. On that day, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, which responded with intense bombing and a ground campaign in Gaza.

Months later, the war rages on, while journalists continue to chronicle the events — from the Middle East to college campuses in the U.S., where protests persist.

And the Pulitzer Prize Board recognized that by recognizing remarkable work done covering the war.

You can start with its decision to give a Special Citation to journalists in Gaza. The board said in its statement, “In recent years the Pulitzer Board has issued citations honoring journalists covering wars in Ukraine and Afghanistan. This year, the Board recognizes the courageous work of journalists and media workers covering the war in Gaza. Under horrific conditions, an extraordinary number of journalists have died in the effort to tell the stories of Palestinians and others in Gaza. This war has also claimed the lives of poets and writers among the casualties. As the Pulitzer Prizes honor categories of journalism, arts, and letters, we mark the loss of invaluable records of the human experience.”

The International Federation of Journalists reports more than 100 journalists have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Meanwhile, two of the major categories — International Reporting and Breaking News Photography — went to coverage of the war. The staff of The New York Times won for International Reporting for its “wide-ranging and revelatory” coverage of Hamas’ attack in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, while Reuters won for Breaking News Photography for its “raw and urgent photographs” documenting the Oct. 7 attack.

Throughout history, the Pulitzers often select the important stories at that moment in history: Watergate, Vietnam, COVID-19, and so on. This moment in time is a grim one. But also a reminder of how important journalism is at these moments to help us understand our world.

The Times coverage

Not surprisingly, there was some criticism, at least on social media, that The New York Times won the International Reporting Pulitzer for its coverage of Oct. 7.

My Poynter colleague, Angela Fu, noted, “The Times’ entry did not include its Dec. 28 report that purported to find a pattern of sexual violence against women during Hamas’ attack on Israel. The controversial investigation, “Screams Without Words: Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” has faced intense scrutiny from critics who have questioned its accuracy and reporting process.”

Even beyond that, the Times has become a lightning rod for all sides regarding its coverage. The blowback for winning journalism’s highest award for writing about such a polarizing topic could not have been unexpected for the Pulitzer Board.

Yet one cannot deny the Times’ entry was incredibly well done, and prize-worthy.

Great writing

The Feature Writing category was especially strong. The winner ended up being Katie Engelhart, a contributing writer for The New York Times, for her story about dementia and what happens in its wake.

But the other finalists were also superb. One was Keri Blakinger, who is now with the Los Angeles Times. If you’re not familiar, Blakinger once served time behind bars and has spent much of her career since then writing — extremely authoritatively and well — about the prison system. She has become one of those writers that you have to read every time she publishes something. Blakinger’s submission was when she was with The Marshall Project (in partnership with The New York Times Magazine) and she wrote about men on death row in Texas who play the fantasy game “Dungeons & Dragons.”

Meanwhile, are there many better feature writers in the country at the moment than The Atlantic’s Jennifer Senior? Senior won the Feature Writing Pulitzer in 2022 and her deeply personal story about her family easily could have won this year.

Profile in courage

In what was my favorite Pulitzer winner this year, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a contributor for The Washington Post, won in the Commentary category. Kara-Murza puts his own life and future freedom in grave jeopardy by writing his columns from behind bars in Russia. Stunning when you think about it.

Kara-Murza has been imprisoned in Russia since 2022 following his criticism of the war in Ukraine and was sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of treason last year.

A haunting series

I mentioned the Post won three Pulitzers. In addition to Kara-Murza and David E. Hoffman (Editorial Writing), the Post won in National Reporting for its sober examination of the AR-15, which has become a popular choice for those who commit mass shootings. Last year, I spoke with Post executive editor Sally Buzbee about the Post’s decision to show extremely graphic photos of mass shootings. She told me at the time, “We’re not trying to create things purely for shock value. What we really sought to do here was to show just how destructive, how profoundly devastating this type of shooting with this type of weapon is.”

Big and small

When it came to this year’s winners and finalists, you had a lot of really big news outlets (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, etc.) and quite a few small outlets who made the list. What you didn’t have a lot of was much of the middle. I’m talking about the normally strong local, regional-type papers such as, say, The Boston Globe, The Star Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, and so on.

My colleague Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s media business analyst, pointed out, “For-profit metro newspapers and their digital sites … long a significant presence in capturing journalism’s highest honors, were virtually shut out. They did not have a winner and placed just six finalists in the 15 journalism categories. Off years can happen in unpredictable fashion in the Pulitzer judging process, as the initial juries work independently and balance is not a consideration. But it is hard not to see the constantly worsening financial plight of the metros stripping them of capacity to do the very best work.”

Longtime media reporter Paul Farhi noted on X how big news organizations dominated this year’s Pulitzers. Of the 15 journalism categories, The Washington Post and The New York Times won three prizes each; Reuters and The New Yorker each won two; and The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and ProPublica won one each. Farhi added, “Not a sign of a healthy business.”

It’s important to point out that this is just one year. Just a year ago, The Boston Globe, The Star Tribune, Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday and Houston Chronicle were finalists. The Miami Herald and AL.com won Pulitzers. This year’s first-ever Poynter Prizes recognized outstanding work from metro dailies that easily could have been Pulitzer finalists this year.

But it is something to keep in mind in the years ahead. As Edmonds wrote, “I want to be hopeful that the metros will do better a year from now as the long look for a new business model finds traction. Four months into 2024, however, their finances appear to be as bad or worse.”

Drawing up another good year

Clay Bennett didn’t win the Pulitzer this year, but the editorial cartoonist was a finalist in the category of Illustrated Reporting and Commentary, adding to his already amazing Pulitzer resume. Bennett won the 2002 prize for Editorial Cartooning, and was a finalist in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2008 and 2013. It was nice to see him back among the finalists this year. The winner was Medar de la Cruz for The New Yorker.

Look who it is

Zadie Smith is best known for her books, including her 2000 debut “White Teeth.” (A personal favorite of mine.) But this year, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the Criticism category for her New York Review of Books’ film review of “Tár.” The winner, however, was the Los Angeles Times’ Justin Chang for his film criticism.

The big prize

Public Service is considered the most prestigious award of the Pulitzers. This year’s Pulitzer in that category went to some of the most talked about reporting of the year as ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg wrote about a small group of politically influential billionaires who bought gifts and trips for Supreme Court justices, raising concerns that the court could be bought. It’s hard to remember a story with more buzz last year.

For more on this, I turn it over to my Poynter colleagues Ellen Hine and Josie Hollingsworth.

How ProPublica’s audience engagement strategy kept its groundbreaking reporting top-of-mind

If you were on social media at all last spring, you probably couldn’t escape ProPublica’s stories that looked into ties between the U.S. Supreme Court justices and the billionaires who wooed them with lavish gifts and travel.

Good audience engagement gives readers multiple avenues for entering a story. ProPublica’s robust social media promotion for its “Friends of the Court” series, which won this year’s prize for Public Service, did exactly that.

Long X threads showed off the private jet and 162-foot yacht that Justice Clarence Thomas and major Republican donor Harlan Crow used for their luxury trips together. Instagram posts shared strikingly chummy pictures of Thomas and Crow together on vacation and highlighted bank records showing how Crow paid the private school tuition of Thomas’ grandnephew. And live events took readers behind the scenes of the investigation into the justices’ relationships with billionaire donors.


Many of these social treatments (plus, certainly, their aggregate) received eye-popping engagement. ProPublica, for months, saw this story pay dividends in user engagement across its audience channels. Since ProPublica published its first report on the gifts, the newsroom launched a TikTok, which, as expected, continued to juice the investigation with a “one year later” video this past April.

This kind of highly visual and explanatory audience engagement treatment made ProPublica’s investigation accessible to different kinds of audiences, from the casual social media user to the devoted newsroom supporter. This persistent approach also kept questions about the justices’ lack of accountability in the minds of the public and politicians, pushing the court to adopt its first-ever code of conduct.

My thanks to Ellen and Josie.

Here are a few more quick thoughts about this year’s Pulitzers …

Now onto a few other non-Pulitzer media items and links …

No no Noem

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem should really stop doing interviews for a few days.

Noem has a new book coming out today and already there is controversy. The book had to be revised because she had written she had met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There are reports that it never happened, and even Noem’s office admitted that part of the book needed to be revised.

When asked about it by “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan on Sunday, Noem danced around the answer, never saying yes or no, but saying she had met many leaders.

So Noem was asked again about it on Monday’s “CBS Mornings.” And, again, she could not give a straight yes or no answer when asked if she ever met Kim. She would go no further than saying, “I’ve met with many, many world leaders. I’ve traveled around the world. I should not have put that anecdote in the book.”

Doesn’t she realize she is making it worse?

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote, “Does Noem want people to believe the meeting might have actually happened but she just can’t talk about it? That’s difficult to square with the initial comment about conflating world leaders’ names. And even if the newer implication is correct, it would mean she put a meeting she wasn’t supposed to talk about in her book, which could certainly lead to questions about her judgment.”

The Godwin news

Former ABC News president Kim Godwin, shown here in 2022. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Following up on the not-so-stunning-but-still-a-big-deal story of Kim Godwin announcing Sunday night that she was stepping down as president of ABC News.

As I wrote in Monday’s newsletter, Godwin was named president of ABC News in 2021, becoming the first Black woman to be named president of a broadcast news network. But after some Disney restructuring in February, Debra OConnell was brought in to oversee the news division. OConnell — whose title is president, news group and networks, Disney Entertainment — became Godwin’s boss and held the real power in the news division. CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy reported last week that OConnell had been conducting a review of Godwin’s performance.

We can assume that the review did not bode well for Godwin.

The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin and John Koblin wrote, “Over the last couple of years, ABC News has had no shortage of headaches. The network’s morning show, ‘Good Morning America,’ has gone through a rough patch, having lost in a key ratings demographic — adults under the age of 54 — to an archrival, NBC’s ‘Today,’ for several months. Worse, ‘CBS Mornings,’ normally the also-ran in the morning show race, has bested ‘G.M.A.’ in the key ratings demographic several times going back to December, a highly unusual development.”

There’s more, but it’s never good for a news division leader when the morning show is having, as the Times described it, “a rough patch.”

However, the Times added, “Ms. Godwin did have supporters in the industry, including some who saw racial bias in the criticism of her leadership. On Saturday, the day before her departure but amid reports of her losing confidence in the newsroom, the National Association of Black Journalists released a statement in support of Ms. Godwin.”

Hot type

Actually, here’s one more Pulitzer Prize item. A good roundup from The New York Times’ Elizabeth A. Harris and Joumana Khatib: “A Guide to the Winning Books and Finalists.”

More resources for journalists

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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Tom Jones
Tom Jones is Poynter’s senior media writer for Poynter.org. He was previously part of the Tampa Bay Times family during three stints over some 30…
Tom Jones

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