The war provoked by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine dominated the awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes. This year’s issue included a special call for the release of The Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, recently arrested in Moscow on espionage charges.
The Associated Press (AP) agency, with Julie Pace as director, took one of the most outstanding distinctions, that of public service, for the “courageous reporting” of its envoys when reporting on the siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. She also won the prize for breaking news photographs taken during the first days of the war. The team of photojournalists includes the Spaniards Emilio Morenatti and Bernat Armangué.
Coverage of the war in Europe also earned The New York Times the international reporting award. This headline achieved another distinction for Mona Chalabi’s work in which she examined the wealth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
As usual, the major US media dominated the podium of the most prestigious awards given to journalism in the US, with The Washington Post leading the way with three, with issues dedicated to the consequences of the judicial suppression of the national authorization to abort, to the description of the impact of the pandemic, while the third fell to its editors Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa for the non-fiction book dedicated to George Floyd, whose death triggered the racial protests in May 2020.
In addition to the AP and the Times with two, the Los Angeles Times received as many and The Wall Street Journal received one.
But in the hall of Columbia University, in upper Manhattan, this Monday the digital newspaper AL.com from Alabama and based in Birmingham slipped between these giants.
Four members of his writing took the Pulitzer to local reporting for exposing the abusive actions of the police in Brookside, an investigation that led to the expulsion of several members, changes in state legislation and the release of people accused under false accusations. The other AL.com nod went to Kyle Whitmire, who explored issues surrounding 150 years of racial whitening.