The Pulitzer Prizes on Monday honored The Washington Post for hard-hitting reporting on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and The New York Times for revealing Vladimir Putin’s covert power grab, praising their probing of powerful people despite a hostile climate for the news media. The Daily News of New York and ProPublica, a web-based platform specializing in investigative journalism, won the prize for public service journalism for coverage of New York police abuses that forced mostly poor minorities from their homes.

Other winners included an international consortium of more than 300 reporters on six continents that exposed the so-called Panama Papers detailing the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens used by the high and mighty. The Pulitzers, the most prestigious honors in American journalism, have been awarded since 1917, often going to famed publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

But they are also won by smaller, lesser known publications across the country whose work does not always gain national attention when it is published. Reporter Eric Eyre of Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia took the prize for investigative reporting for exposing a flood of opioids in depressed West Virginia counties with the country’s highest overdose death rates.The staff of the East Bay Times of Oakland, California, won the breaking news award for coverage of the “Ghost Ship” fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party, exposing the city’s failure to take actions that might have prevented the disaster.

‘TRANSPARENT JOURNALISM’

 While the Pulitzer ceremony highlighted the news media’s importance to democracy, it has been challenged by so-called fake news, which once referred to fabricated stories meant to influence the U.S. election but has become a term used by Trump to dismiss factual reporting that is critical. Trump has frequently excoriated the media and in February called it “the enemy of the American people.”

Operating in the glare of the 2016 presidential campaign, David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post took the national reporting award. The judges said he “created a model for transparent journalism in political campaign coverage while casting doubt on Donald Trump’s assertions of generosity toward charities.”

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Fahrenthold found that Trump’s charitable giving had not always matched his public statements. He also broke perhaps the biggest scoop of the campaign, revealing Trump had been captured on videotape making crude remarks about women and bragging about kissing and grabbing them without their permission.

The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a longtime Republican, took the commentary prize for a series of critical pieces about Trump during the real estate magnate’s successful run for the White House.The New York Times staff won the international reporting prize for articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russia’s power abroad, a particularly pertinent story given U.S. intelligence conclusions that Putin’s government actively tried to influence the U.S. election in Trump’s favor.

The Times revealed “techniques that included assassination, online harassment and the planting of incriminating evidence on opponents,” the judges said.Reuters was a finalist in the national reporting and breaking news photography categories. Photographer Jonathan Bachman was recognized for his image of a woman being detained by police during a protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In national reporting, the Reuters team of Renee Dudley, Steve Stecklow, Alexandra Harney, Irene Jay Liu, Koh Gui Qing, James Pomfret and Ju-min Park was recognized for their series “Cheat Sheet,” documenting how the business of college admissions and standardized testing has been corrupted.

 The 19-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. It chose the winners with the help of 102 jurors.

More than 2,500 entries were submitted this year, competing for 21 prizes. Seven of the awards recognize fiction, drama, history, biographies, poetry, general nonfiction and music.Author Colson Whitehead won the fiction award for “The Underground Railroad,” a work the judges said “combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America.”The Pulitzers began in 1917 after a bequest from newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.</s>Literary blockbuster novel The Underground Railroad, which depicts the journey of a young woman escaping from slavery via a fantastical train system, has won the Pulitzer prize for fiction.

Author Colson Whitehead has collected multiple accolades for the bestselling book, including last year’s National Book Award. Moonlight director Barry Jenkins is adapting the story into a limited series for Amazon.

“For a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America,” read the Pulitzer judges’ note about Whitehead’s win.

The author reacted to the news on Twitter:

The Pulitzer prizes, considered the most prestigious journalism and arts awards in the country, were announced on Wednesday afternoon at Columbia University in New York.

Playwright Lynn Nottage nabbed her second Pulitzer for the drama Sweat, a Broadway play about factory workers battling job cuts.

Author Matthew Desmond won the nonfiction award for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, a book about housing inequality and evictions, and Hisham Matar won the biography prize for The Return, his book on his missing father in Libya.

Bestseller When Breath Becomes Air by the late Paul Kalanithi, the autobiography of a dying surgeon, was a runner-up in the biography category.



Tyehimba Jess won the poetry award for his work Olio.

In the journalism awards, New York Daily News and ProPublica jointly nabbed the top award, for public service, for their investigation into the New York police department evicting people, mostly minorities, from their homes.

“We are not in a period of decline in journalism. Rather, we are in the midst of a revolution,” Pulitzer prize administrator Mike Pride said during the award ceremony.

David A Fahrenthold of the Washington Post won the national reporting award for his coverage of the lack of promised donations by the Trump Foundation during the election. He regularly tweeted his news-gathering techniques, a photo of a crammed notepad listing organizations he had called showing the scale of the issue.

California’s East Bay Times nabbed the breaking news Pulitzer for its coverage of the Oakland fire at a warehouse that killed 36 people.

Hilton Als of the New Yorker won the criticism award, Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail took home the investigative award for his reporting on opioids in West Virginia, and the New York Times garnered the international reporting award for its coverage of Vladimir Putin and Russia.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald won the explanatory reporting award for its work on the Panama Papers.</s>Lynn Nottage’s play “Sweat,” about the American working class, was awarded the prize for drama. And the drama critic Hilton Als of The New Yorker won for criticism.

The Pulitzers this year come as financial pressure drains many news organizations of the resources to pursue top-flight journalism. They also come in the face of a combative stance from President Trump, who has called the news media “the enemy of the American people.”

But for one day, at least, newsrooms came together in celebration, and the journalism industry’s focus was on its accomplishments and purpose, rather than its woes.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and The Miami Herald shared the prize for explanatory reporting for their coverage of millions of leaked documents known as the Panama Papers. (The Herald also won in another category — Jim Morin was awarded the prize for editorial cartooning.)

Eric Eyre of The Charleston Gazette-Mail won the investigative reporting prize for coverage that laid bare the relentless flow of opioids into West Virginia counties with the highest rate of overdose deaths in the country. The East Bay Times of Oakland, Calif., won the breaking news reporting prize for its coverage of the “Ghost Ship” fire in December that killed 36 people at a warehouse party, chronicling the city’s failures that led to the tragedy. The prize for editorial writing was awarded to Art Cullen of The Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly newspaper in Iowa with a circulation of 3,000, for editorials that held corporate agricultural interests accountable. The Times is owned by Mr. Cullen and his older brother.</s>NEW YORK, April 10 (Reuters) - The New York Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism on Monday for coverage of police abuses that forced mostly poor minorities from their homes, and the Charleston Gazette-Mail won the prize for investigative reporting on the spread of painkillers in West Virginia.

David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post took the national reporting prize for reporting on the Donald Trump campaign for president, noting that he "created a model for transparent journalism in political campaign coverage while casting doubt on Donald Trump's assertions of generosity toward charities."

The Pulitzers are the most prestigious honors in American journalism and have been awarded since 1917.

The Daily News, a New York City tabloid, and ProPublica, a web-based platform specializing in investigative journalism, uncovered police abuse of eviction rules that ousted hundreds of mostly poor minorities from their homes, Pulitzer Prize Administrator Mike Pride said.

The New York Times staff won the international reporting prize for articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to project Russia's power abroad.

The 19-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. It chose the winners with the help of 102 jurors.

More than 2,500 entries were submitted this year, competing for 21 prizes in categories ranging from public service and breaking news to commentary, cartooning and photography.

The Pulitzers began in 1917 after a bequest from newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. His will established Columbia University in New York as administrator of the prizes and also bestowed an endowment on the university to establish its School of Journalism. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta)</s>ProPublica and The New York Daily News Monday won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, honoring their joint investigation on abuses in the New York City Police Department’s enforcement of the nuisance abatement law. The award is the fourth Pulitzer Prize for ProPublica and the 11th for the Daily News.

The series of articles by Sarah Ryley detailed a little-known NYPD practice — lawsuits that allow police to ban people from their homes or businesses, without due process, under claims that they are being used for illegal purposes. The measure was initially conceived to push out the sex industry from Times Square.

In her initial analysis Ryley spotted the alarming trend of residents who were not convicted of crimes, and who were even cleared of their charges, but removed from their homes anyway. The cases, roughly 1,000 in New York City each year, happened almost exclusively in communities of color. Then a data projects editor and investigative reporter at the New York Daily News, Ryley had been looking into nuisance abatement laws for more than a year, while juggling other responsibilities. To allow for the kind of long-term, in-depth reporting and data work that the story demanded, Ryley joined forces with ProPublica.

ProPublica provided three researchers who helped perform the time-consuming work of going through every nuisance abatement case filed in the previous year and a half — 1,162 in total — tracking every major step of the process, cross-referencing hundreds of cases with parallel proceedings in criminal court and the State Liquor Authority, and entering the details into spreadsheets. A ProPublica photographer, fluent in Spanish, assisted with the project’s extensive fieldwork — not only documenting the faces of families and business owners targeted by nuisance abatement actions, but also helping interview victims in largely Spanish-speaking communities such as the South Bronx and East Harlem. ProPublica editors worked with Ryley to develop and structure the pieces, which were the first long-form stories of her journalism career.

After exposing the NYPD’s startling abuses with irrefutable data, the investigation led to important results. Weeks after the first story’s publication, the NYPD imposed new procedural safeguards, and the number of nuisance abatement actions dropped significantly.

The findings shocked even veteran city politicians, many of whom said they were unaware that the nuisance abatement law granted such powers. Citing Ryley’s reporting, the New York City Council passed a package of 13 bills in 2017 that made sweeping reforms to the way the NYPD can carry out nuisance abatement actions, including the virtual elimination of one of the most controversial aspects of the law: the city’s ability to close locations without warning, pending a resolution to the case. Enacted in March, the new laws carve out exceptions only for cases involving prostitution, certain building code violations and businesses that pose a significant risk of physical harm to the public. The reforms mark the most sweeping changes to the nuisance abatement law since it was enacted in the 1970s, and the only changes to add protections for the accused rather than expanding enforcement powers.

The Pulitzer Prize for public service is widely considered the highest honor in American journalism. This is the first time since 1933 that the sole focus of the public service prize has been on coverage of New York City.

“The reporting partnership behind this series reflects the type of collaboration that ProPublica had in mind when our newsroom launched nine years ago,” said Robin Fields, managing editor of ProPublica. “By adding capacity to Sarah’s extraordinary expertise as a city reporter through research, editorial guidance and multimedia components, we sought to shine a brighter light on the abuses she had uncovered and maximize the potential for impact. We are proud the series was recognized for this prestigious award, in addition to being a force for change.”

“The nuisance abatement series is the most important journalism we undertook during my time as editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News,” said Jim Rich, who championed and shepherded the project while at the Daily News. “It gave voice to those suffering heartless injustice at the hands of a broken public policy. I am incredibly proud of Sarah and all the editors at ProPublica and the Daily News who worked so hard on this vital project.”

“The investigation into the workings of the nuisance abasement law is a stellar example of the media fulfilling its duty to monitor fairness in the legal system,” said Arthur Browne, editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News. “Designed as a tool for closing establishments rife with criminality, the statute vests police and other officials with extraordinary powers — powers they misapplied against regular citizens without check by an effective judiciary. Thanks to this investigation, New York now sees how an extremely muscular law, combined with aggressive policing, combined with a lack of counsel, combined with lax judges produced damaging miscarriages of justice.”

ProPublica was also a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting, for Machine Bias, a groundbreaking series on the hidden power of computer-driven algorithms. Exploring how algorithms can produce unfair differences, from the advertisements we see to decisions made in the criminal justice system, the series was ProPublica’s seventh Pulitzer finalist.

ProPublica reporters received Pulitzer Prizes for explanatory reporting in 2016, national reporting in 2011, and investigative reporting in 2010, in addition to being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2016 and a finalist for public service in 2010.</s>The New York Daily News and ProPublica have won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series on how officials are using a nuisance abatement law to evict people from their homes, even if they haven't committed a crime. The reporting came from the review of 516 residential nuisance abatement actions from Jan. 1, 2013, through June 30, 2014.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Times-Standard.</s>New York Daily News And ProPublica Win Pulitzer For Public Service Journalism

Writers, editors and artists took home Pulitzer Prizes across 21 categories on Monday. Among the winners was author Colson Whitehead for his novel, The Underground Railroad.</s>NEW YORK — The New York Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for uncovering how police abused eviction rules to oust hundreds of people, mostly poor minorities, from their homes.

In a year when the tumultuous presidential campaign dominated U.S. news, David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post was honored with the Pulitzer for national reporting for exposing questionable practices at Donald Trump’s charitable foundation. The New York Times’ staff received the international reporting award for its work on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Moscow’s power abroad.

Eric Eyre of The Charleston Gazette-Mail won the investigative reporting prize for writing about the scourge of opiate painkillers in poor parts of West Virginia.

The staff of the East Bay Times in Oakland, California, received the breaking news reporting award for its coverage of a fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party and its follow-up reporting on how local officials hadn’t taken action that might have prevented it.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald — which amassed a group of over 400 journalists to examine of the leaked “Panama Papers” and expose the way that politicians, criminals and rich people stashed case in offshore accounts — won the Pulitzer for explanatory reporting.

The staff of The Salt Lake Tribune received the local reporting award for its work on how sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University are treated.

Considered the most distinguished awards in American journalism, the Pulitzers are handed out in 14 categories of reporting, photography, criticism and commentary by newspapers, magazines and websites.

Arts prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music.

This is the 101st year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Public service award winners receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $10,000 each.</s>For its top 2017 journalism award — the Public Service gold medal — the Pulitzer Prizes reached beyond several entries growing out of the presidential election campaign. Rather, it honored a gritty New York Daily News and ProPublica collaboration that identified and corrected abusive practices by New York City’s police department.

The project’s lead reporter, Sarah L. Ryley, an 11-year veteran of the Daily News and other New York papers, interrupted a night of celebrating to tell Poynter by phone that more than the Pulitzer, “the validation of our work was that we got 13 laws passed.” The laws, aimed at so-called “nuisance abatement” legal activity by the NYPD, helped keep mostly poor and minority citizens from being evicted from their homes and businesses.

“I was totally surprised and thrilled that it was recognized in this way,” Ryley said of the Pulitzer for the Daily News and New York-based ProPublica, whose work had largely been passed over by other journalism competitions. She credited the impact of the project, getting public attention and helping win corrective legislation with leading to the Pulitzer honor.

“It did have an incredible reaction from readers,” she said, “but also from elected officials. I want to sing the praises of metro dailies, which have such an impact with the mayor and city council. We forced them to account for what the city had done.”

A statement from ProPublica president Richard Tofel called the stories on which it collaborated “strong examples of ProPublica’s mission: to expose abuses of power and spur change.” He noted that after the initial investigation was published “the New York City Council began working to reform these practices and the NYPD drastically diminished their use of the [nuisance-abatement] orders.”

In particular, Tofel credited ProPublica editor Eric Umansky for his work with Ryley and others at the Daily News.

Related Training: How to Do Award-Winning Journalism: Lessons From Pulitzer Winners

The seven-member Pulitzer Public Service jury met in late February and forwarded the Daily News-ProPublica entry as one of three top choices, along with two other regional investigations by big-city papers. Working with the jury nominations, the Pulitzer board named The Chicago Tribune a finalist for its stories exposing dangerous pharmacy practices in ignoring harmful drug interaction, with the Houston Chronicle being named for its revelations of unfair cost cutting aimed at special-education students.

“We expected to see more entries that had to do with the national election,” said juror Howard Saltz, editor of the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

He said that at least two entries had concerned candidate Donald Trump, with others dealing with election fraud. And at least one Trump-related entry was forwarded to the Pulitzer board among the additional recommendations, beyond the top three voted by the jury, Saltz said. But the jury agreed on the Tribune, Chronicle and Daily News-ProPublica entries—especially noting the powerful impact the three had had in their communities and the combination of impressive reporting and presentation skills they displayed.

Some jurors were surprised, Saltz said, that campaign-related stories by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold weren’t included among the work reviewed in Public Service. Fahrenthold was awarded the Pulitzer in the National Reporting category yesterday. The Pulitzer citation said the reporter’s Post coverage “created a model for transparent journalism in political campaign coverage while casting doubt on Donald Trump’s assertions of generosity toward charities."

Emory University professor and author Hank Klibanoff — a fellow Public Service juror who himself was a 2007 Pulitzer winner for History — said in a telephone interview "it would be wrong" to assume that having three regional stories nominated in their category meant that Public Service journalism at a national level was lacking.

“It was a phenomenal year for public service journalism of all kinds,” he said.

In an email this morning, Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said to Poynter that Fahrenthold's work “didn’t seem to fit well in the public service category based on what has won there in the past.” Besides National Reporting, the Fahrenthold stories also were entered in the investigative category, Baron said.

Ryley said in the interview that she “had been working on the story at the Daily News since early 2014, doubling that story with other responsibilities,” including for a time as special projects editor. The Daily News is “a typical daily newspaper that’s stretched thin for resources. I was getting away whenever I could.”

As she grounded herself in the peculiarities of the nuisance-abatement activity the police were using in legal cases against citizens, one issue she faced was developing databases for the Daily News to use. Cooperation from the NYPD was minimal. That led her to plan coffee with ProPublica editor Umansky in the spring of 2015.

“We had been talking about the potential of some partnerships, and when I told him about this story he was very interested,” she said.

Working with ProPublica “was amazing; their editors are fantastic,” she added. “They provided resources that helped bring the project to the next level.”

Because Ryley doesn’t speak Spanish, ProPublica also helped her with contacting Latino victims of the legal measures the NYPD was employing. Among other Daily News staffers she cited for working on the project was editor Robert Moore. In placing as a finalist last week in the Investigative Reporters and Editors competition, other contributors cited were Barry Paddock, Christine Lee, Pia Dangelmayer, Andrea Hilbert and Sarah Smith.

There was no particular “aha!” moment in her reporting, she said.

“There were a million different moments, where things kept getting more egregious.”

But she does recall being particularly shocked when she saw attorneys for the NYPD “pulling people into the hallway and giving them advice,” when the people being evicted didn’t have legal representation of their own.

Ryley noted that “there was a time when we could have taken on this project ourselves” at the Daily News. But financial and other pressures have taken their toll. “I’m really happy the Daily News was recognized. It’s so often unheralded, but it does so much public service work. To be at a New York City tabloid is one of the things I’ve cherished."

She’s proudest that in the face of NYPD injustice, “we kept on them, with stories, editorials and letters,” and won regulatory change. She added, “This is a really important time to talk about this. The Daily News is fighting for its life; I went in today to a sea of empty desks.”

Her own desk is now empty, too. It was announced before the Pulitzers that as she has just begun a new job as investigative reporter for The Trace, a nonprofit news organization focusing on gun violence.

She began there on the day of the Pulitzer win.</s>The New York Daily News and ProPublica are the twin recipients of this year's Pulitzer Prize for public service.

The pairing of a famed local newspaper and an ambitious nonprofit news web site might strike some people as symbolic of turbulent times in journalism.

The Pulitzers, administered by Columbia University, are the most prestigious prizes in American journalism for newspaper and digital news coverage. Winners and finalists were announced on Monday.

The public service prize recognized the Daily News and ProPublica for partnering to expose how the New York Police Department abused eviction rules.

ProPublica is just nine years old but has won four Pulitzers, partly through its innovative collaborations with other news organizations.

Other winners on Monday included the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald, in the explanatory reporting category, for coverage of the Panama Papers; the East Bay Times for breaking news; and the Charleston Gazette-Mail for investigative reporting.

The Pulitzers recognize work from the 2016 calendar year, which means some of the entries involved election-related topics.

The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold won the national reporting prize for investigating Donald Trump's track record of charitable giving.

"David never took things at face value. He checked out everything with amazing persistence," Post editor Marty Baron said in a statement. "And he went about his work in an innovative, highly resourceful manner -- soliciting the assistance of the public via Twitter. In that way, he reimagined how investigative reporting can be carried out while also providing a level of transparency into his work that fascinated the public."

After the election, Fahrenthold became a CNN contributor on top of his Post reporting.

Short summaries accompanied each winning entry. Only one of the prize summaries -- for Fahrenthold's reporting -- mentioned President Trump by name.

But some of the other prizes recognized work that reckoned with the consequences of the campaign and tried to lend insight to the election and its aftermath.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan received the commentary prize for, the judges said, "rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation's most divisive political campaigns."

The staff of The New York Times shared the international reporting prize for what the judges called "agenda-setting reporting on Vladimir Putin's efforts to project Russia's power abroad."
The New York Daily News and ProPublica win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on nuisance abatement by police targeting minorities.