On Monday, the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were announced. This effectively stands as the Academy Awards of journalism, if you will, with the notable exception that there is no glitzy red carpet, network-wide scrum covering the handing out of this honorarium, and for good reason. As a participant in the media sphere, I can attest that we are not a gorgeous and fashionable lot of folks likely to drive trends in the coming year.
“So, who are you wearing tonight?”
“This is a tweed coat I found in my grandfather’s hunting lodge, and the wife repurposed her mother’s cotillion gown!”
But still, the Pulitzers being what they are, we are told to care, as this is the outfit that has become the arbiter of deciding what qualifies as the pinnacle of journalism. (We here at Redstate and Townhall go the other route, recognizing the nadir of journalism. That’s kind of our thing.) So we are bidden to look over the cast of winners this year, and, in doing so, become struck by an expected reality: If ya wanna win, trash Trump!
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This was certainly more than a trend this year, as we comb through the various categories and see the pattern developing. It is seen right at the top, with the major award, Distinguished Public Service. This is the Pulitzer equivalent to Best Picture, as the category entails the bulk of work dedicated to an ongoing news item of national import, and this year the top honor goes to the withering Washington Post.
The Pulitzer committee says that the gang at WaPo is to be lauded “for piercing the veil of secrecy around the Trump administration's chaotic overhaul of federal agencies.“ I find this a little baffling. Secrecy?! I remember the president coming out and boasting how he would be cutting government programs, and recall seeing Elon Musk in the Oval Office as they trumpeted DOGE taking a Husqvarna to various programs. But sure, it was all clandestine, otherwise.
This is only the beginning, as we see that kind of coverage celebrated throughout the meritorious list. Going through the categories, the tabulation of the preferred topic for the committee is rather evident, in both the winners and those other sources noted through nominations.
PUBLIC SERVICE
Along with WaPo winning, the Chicago Tribune is recognized for covering the ICE sweep in Chi-Town, and also the Wall Street Journal, whose reporting “provoked” the release of the Epstein files.
BREAKING NEWS
[This category is usually reserved for coverage of tragedies and natural disasters; slight praise to the Pulitzer board for not going with selections that found a way of blaming Trump for “provoking” the global-climate-environmental-warming-change-crisis.]
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
The New York Times gets a medallion for looking into Trump and his family getting enriched while in office. (Congress…not so much, but good work anyway.) ProPublica was nominated for its investigation into how the DEA was permitting dangerous generic drugs into the country. (This, from the people who wanted us to turn away from Big Pharma.)
EXPLANATORY REPORTING
Losing out to the SanFran Chronicle doing work on the flawed insurance industry after the L.A. wildfires was Bloomberg on the lax DEA standards regarding cancer drug efficacy, and ProPublica for its work on the freezing of USAID payouts and the ramifications.
BEAT REPORTING (A new category)
Reuters took the inaugural honor for looking at how AI affects children. Losing out to them was the NY Times for exposing the agonizing effects our immigration policy had on (wait for it)...illegal immigrants. The Atlantic was likewise nominated for covering the dire results of kicking out the truants.
LOCAL REPORTING
One of the two prizes went to the Chicago Tribune for the same thing that it was nominated for in Public Service; its work was “described in vivid, muscular prose how the siege-like incursion of ICE agents unified Chicagoans in resistance.” (The board should get a medal for Distinguished Florid Locqaciousness.)
NATIONAL REPORTING
It was an all-Trump battle for this one, with Reuters nabbing the esteemed copper amulet with its coverage of the way Trump expanded his executive powers and worked to “exact vengeance on his foes.” Bloomberg missed out with its reporting on Trump deregulating cryptocurrencies, and WaPo fell short on reporting on Trump’s “mass deportation campaign.” (For the record, we checked back and saw no nominations in the years Biden and Obama were evicting immigrants at a greater clip.)
INTERNATIONAL REPORTING
The New York Times was nominated for detailing the nefarious aftereffects of the USAID money drying up abroad. (We await commentary on why no other Western nations are providing the funds to keep these people from dying.)
OPINION WRITING
The board felt M. Gessen of The New York Times deserved plaudits for several columns that were “illuminating,” as he pointed out oppressive regimes tend to deliver oppression to the gentry.
Also nominated was the L.A. Times for covering communities impacted by Trump's immigration policies, and the slowly unraveling Nicolas Kristof was tabbed for his string of hits on the cancellation of USAID money.
That is a total of 16 winners and/or nominees across nine categories, but the committee was not done. They decided to go ahead with awarding a Special Citation Award to Julie Kelly of the Miami Herald. This was for her work in uncovering details about the Jeffrey Epstein court cases in Florida and subsequent reporting – from nine years ago.
Dredging up almost decade-old reporting to highlight the Epstein files? Nah, they are not at all bitter about the court case Trump filed against the Pulitzers over awarding the debunked Russian collusion reporting.
ALSO SEE: Florida Judge Tells Gaslighting Pulitzer Board They Have to Face the Music in Trump Defamation Suit
Just for fun, and to be comprehensive, here are some of the other honors passed around this year.
DISTINGUISHED CRITICISM
Mark Lamster of the Dallas Morning News wins for “rigorous and passionate architecture criticism.” (Trundle around D.C. and you’ll hear anyone bellowing, “I hate that ugly building!”) This subject was apparently catnip for the judges. Also nominated was Michael J. Lewis of The Wall Street Journal, “for informed and insightful writing about architecture.”
AUDIO REPORTING
This one is actually impressive. On the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” they exposed how the Los Angeles Clippers skirted the NBA salary cap to pay off a player by funding his environmental NGO.
FICTION AWARD
This went to “Angel Down,” described as “a breathless novel of World War I, a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism, and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence.”
Oh…kay then…
DRAMA AWARD
“Liberation,” by Bess Wohl, “explores the legacy of the consciousness-raising feminist groups of the 1970s, using the story of the playwright’s mother to demonstrate how the movement grew out of conversation, and that anyone experiencing the play has joined the discussion.” (I’m not banking on this one to steal Broadway tickets from “The Lion King.”)
POETRY
“Ars Poeticas,” by Juliana Spahr, is “a collection in which the poet takes stock of her personal disillusionment, which she uses to interrogate her relationship to her art form, community, and politics.”
(Imagine the stampede at Barnes & Noble to snap up navel-gazing copies of poetry by a poet who is disillusioned with writing poetry.)
MUSIC
“Picaflor: A Future Myth,” by Gabriela Lena Frank, is written about the composer’s experience with the California wildfires. It is comprised of “ten powerful movements that follow a hummingbird through its attempts to escape cataclysms, a contemplation of the fragile future.”
There you have it — you now know what it takes to achieve the delivery of one of the Pulitzer’s prized bronze amulets. Now go on, you hopeful journos, and just try to distinguish yourself among the hordes of others reporting on the same things!
As for me, I’m going in another direction. I will take inspiration from Ms. Spahr, and as a columnist, I intend to write a series of columns about my grappling with column writing and detailing where the column writing future will lead. Come back here for my upcoming 23-part series of columns about the process of writing those columns!
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