DemDaily: The 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winners
April 16, 2019
The winners of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize were announced Monday, recognizing excellence in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States.
Founded in 1917 at the bequest of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the award is considered our country's most prestigious recognition of accomplishment in journalism and the arts.
" The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
-- Ida B. Wells, Journalist
JOURNALISM
| Category | Winner | Body of Work |
|
Public Service
|
South Florida Sun Sentinel
|
For exposing failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
|
|
Breaking News Reporting
|
Staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
|
For immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.
|
|
Investigative Reporting
|
Matt Hamilton, Harriet Ryan & Paul Pringle, the Los Angeles Times
|
For consequential reporting on a University of Southern California gynecologist accused of violating hundreds of young women for more than a quarter-century.
|
|
Explanatory Reporting
|
David Barstow, Susanne Craig & Russ Buettner, The New York Times
|
For an exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump's finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.
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|
Local Reporting
|
Staff of The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
|
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.
|
|
National Reporting
|
Staff of The Wall Street Journal
|
For uncovering President Trump's secret payoffs to two women during his campaign who claimed to have had affairs with him, and the web of supporters who facilitated the transactions, triggering criminal inquiries and calls for impeachment.
|
Breaking News Photography, Edgard Garrido/Reuters (Mexico border)
Lorenzo Tugnoli, Washington Post (Yemen)
Darrin Bell, Editorial Cartooning
| Category | Winner | Body of Work |
|
International Reporting
|
Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry & Nariman El-Mofty, Associated Press | For a revelatory yearlong series detailing the atrocities of the war in Yemen, including theft of food aid, deployment of child soldiers and torture of prisoners. |
|
International Reporting
|
For expertly exposing the military units and Buddhist villagers responsible for the systematic expulsion and murder of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, courageous coverage that landed its reporters in prison.
|
|
|
Hannah Dreier of
ProPublica
|
For a series of powerful, intimate narratives that followed Salvadoran immigrants on New York's Long Island whose lives were shattered by a botched federal crackdown on the international criminal gang MS-13. | |
|
Tony Messenger of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
|
For bold columns that exposed the malfeasance and injustice of forcing poor rural Missourians charged with misdemeanor crimes to pay unaffordable fines or be sent to jail. | |
|
Carlos Lozada of
The Washington Post
|
For trenchant and searching reviews and essays that joined warm emotion and careful analysis in examining a broad range of books addressing government and the American experience. | |
|
Brent Staples of
The New York Times
|
For editorials written with extraordinary moral clarity that charted the racial fault lines in the United States at a polarizing moment in the nation's history. | |
|
freelancer
|
For beautiful and daring editorial cartoons that took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration. | |
|
Photography Staff of
Reuters
|
For a vivid and startling visual narrative of the urgency, desperation and sadness of migrants as they journeyed to the U.S. from Central and South America. | |
|
Lorenzo Tugnoli of
The Washington Post
|
For brilliant photo storytelling of the tragic famine in Yemen, shown through images in which beauty and composure are intertwined with devastation. |
"Freedom of conscience, of education, or speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of our democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
LETTERS, DRAMA & MUSIC
| Category | Winner | Body of Work |
|
Fiction
|
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
(W.W. Norton)
|
An ingeniously structured narrative that branches & canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder & connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them. |
| Drama | Fairview, by Jackie Sibblies Drury |
A hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors' community to face deep-seated prejudices.
|
| History |
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by
David W. Blight
|
A breathtaking history that demonstrates the scope of Frederick Douglass' influence through deep research on his writings, his intellectual evolution and his relationships. |
| Biography | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, by Jeffrey C. Stewart | A panoramic view of the personal trials and artistic triumphs of the father of the Harlem Renaissance and the movement he inspired. |
| Poetry | Be With, by Forrest Gander | A collection of elegies that grapple with sudden loss, and the difficulties of expressing grief and yearning for the departed. |
| General Nonfiction | A classic American story, grippingly told, of an Appalachian family struggling to retain its middle class status in the shadow of destruction wreaked by corporate fracking. | |
| Music |
Ellen Reid
|
A bold new operatic work that uses sophisticated vocal writing and striking instrumental timbres to confront difficult subject matter: the effects of sexual and emotional abuse. |
The Pulitzer Committee also awarded a Special Citation to Aretha Franklin,"for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades," and to Annapolis, Maryland's Capital Gazette, "honoring its journalists, staff and editorial board for their courageous response to the largest killing of journalists in U.S. history in their newsroom on June, 28, 2018."
2019 Pulitzer Winners & Finalists
Recommended! 2019 Pulitzer Video
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