The Washington Post wins three Pulitzer Prizes (2024)

Editorial writer ​​David E. Hoffman was recognized for his series on the rise of autocracy around the world. Vladimir Kara-Murza — a Russian political activist and Post contributing columnist who has been imprisoned in Russia since April 2022 for speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine — won the commentary category for essays he wrote from behind bars.

ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization, won the public service honor — considered the gold medal of the Pulitzers — for its examination of the close relationships between Supreme Court justices and the billionaire donors who have lavished them with gifts and travel.

The Pulitzer committee took special notice of media coverage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent military incursion into Gaza. The New York Times won the international reporting category for its coverage of the conflict, and Reuters won the breaking-news photography category. The committee also issued a special citation honoring the journalists covering Gaza, noting the high number of journalists who have been killed.

In recent years, national news organizations like The Post have dominated the Pulitzers, which are administered by Columbia University: The Times won three prizes Monday, while the New Yorker won two.

But the committee this year also recognized several smaller local news outlets — including the four-year-old Lookout Santa Cruz, which won a breaking-news prize for coverage of devastating floods in central California, and the Honolulu Civil Beat, a finalist for coverage of the August wildfires in Hawaii. Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization on Chicago’s South Side, shared two prizes with media outlets it collaborated with on local crime stories.

The Post’s AR-15 project first took shape on the morning after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Tex., in May 2022. Investigations editor Peter Wallsten pulled two colleagues aside, he recalled Monday, and they quickly agreed on one thing:

“We needed to find a new way to write about mass shootings,” he said. “The same stories were being written over and over, and produced again and again and again, every time there was a mass shooting.”

Cameron Barr, then the Post’s senior managing editor, suggested a focus on just the rifle that has become most closely associated with mass shootings.

Their goal was to tell the weapon’s story in a more ambitious and eye-opening way that would leave no doubt about its raw capacity to destroy human bodies and decimate communities around the country.

One feature of the series, dubbed “American Icon,” used animation to show exactly how bullets fired by an AR-15 can shred the human body. To make the presentation even more visceral, the team got permission from surviving families to depict how two children in two different mass shootings were fatally wounded by the weapon.

“It’s an affirmation of our willingness as a newsroom to take risks,” Wallsten said of the prize. “It’s a reminder of how powerful it can be when a newsroom like The Washington Post decides a really important subject is worth a lot of attention, and we really have a lot of tools at our disposal and we can throw everything we have at a really important topic that’s vital for the country and have a huge impact.”

Another entry in the AR-15 series, “Terror on Repeat,” featured extremely graphic photographs of 11 mass shootings, including the bloodstained floor at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Investigative reporter Silvia Foster-Frau and visual reporter N. Kirkpatrick scoured thousands of images and videos of mass shootings — images, Foster-Frau said, “that are seared into our brains forever.” They started to notice “eerie” commonalities. “Seeing that connection basically made it clear that the story of mass shootings in America is one big story,” she added.

During an editorial meeting, the team presented a slide show of some of the images. Those in the room, including Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, were moved by the raw horror.

“I think I got teary-eyed at certain points when they first started showing it to us,” she recalled. “I can’t imagine any human would not get teary-eyed looking at that stuff.”

Considering the sensitivity surrounding the publication of such images, Buzbee wrote a note to readers explaining the paper’s decision-making process, which balanced the societal importance of the story with sensitivity to the families of those killed.

The Post shared the national reporting category with Reuters, which was recognized for coverage of Elon Musk’s automobile and aerospace businesses — stories, the Pulitzer committee said, that “displayed remarkable breadth and depth and provoked official probes of his companies’ practices in Europe and the United States.”

Hoffman, who has worked at The Post since 1982, said he is “absolutely thrilled” to receive the honor. He launched his series after learning about Danuta Perednya, a 21-year-old Belarusian college student sentenced to six years in prison for reposting her boyfriend’s message on the social media app Telegram that was critical of the war in Ukraine.

“Six years for a post,” Hoffman said. “That to me is the animating thing, the injustice of it. I was angry about these young people being imprisoned.”

While the story drew a large audience online, Hoffman said he wished it had the desired effect of freeing more of the people imprisoned. “I wish I could think of other ways that we could bring it to the world’s attention and stop it,” he said.

Kara-Murza, 42, was not available to comment on receiving the award because he is serving a 25-year sentence on charges of treason for criticizing Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Editorial page editor David Shipley said that Kara-Murza “has made a long-term commitment to live a life where he is speaking out on things that require a lot of moral clarity to speak about.”

“Columnists develop authority and persuasiveness in a lot of different ways,” Shipley said. “His authority is certainly conferred on him by not just his clarity of thought but also the way that he’s lived his life.”

The writer’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, told a newsroom gathering Monday that their family’s travails began well before he was sentenced to prison two years ago. Hospitalized after alleged assassination attempts by poisoning left him suffering organ failure, he had to relearn “how to walk, how to talk, how to use a spoon,” she said.

“I miss his voice on a daily basis. So I want to thank The Washington Post for making sure that the voice of Vladimir is heard. That he is not forgotten. His vision is not forgotten,” she said.

She added: “I’m truly heartbroken that Vladimir cannot be here today and accept this high distinction by himself. He should be here addressing you. He would be finding the right words. Such is the price of telling the truth in today’s Russia.”

Buzbee, who took the top editor role in 2021, said the awards validate The Post’s editorial mission, particularly amid a broader climate of cost-cutting across the media business. “The industry obviously has so much turmoil facing it that it’s so critical for an organization like The Post to keep this commitment to deep reporting, and I think we’re in good shape on that.”

The Pulitzers also honor excellence in book writing, the arts and music.

This year, the committee received some 1,200 journalism submissions, which were considered by a board made up of 18 veteran journalists and academics. The winners receive $15,000, though the honor looms much larger for a recognized journalist or media organization.

The Post was also a nonwinning finalist in three other Pulitzer categories, including a nod for the AR-15 series in the prestigious category for public service journalism.

In the international reporting category, the Pulitzer Prize committee recognized as a finalist “Rising India, Toxic Tech,” a series focused on the ways in which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political party use the internet and social media platforms to achieve their political aims.

Another finalist, in the illustrated reporting and commentary category, was “Searching for Maura,” a beautifully rendered visual telling of the story of an 18-year-old Suyoc Igorot woman from the Philippines who died after coming to the United States to be put on display at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. After she died, a portion of her brain was taken by the director of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s U.S. National Museum, who used human body parts to test his theories about biological differences between races.

Full list of 2024 Pulitzer winners:

Public service: ProPublica

Breaking-news reporting: Staff of Lookout Santa Cruz

Investigative reporting: Hannah Dreier of the New York Times

Explanatory reporting: Sarah Stillman of the New Yorker

Local reporting: Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute

National reporting: Staff of Reuters, and staff of The Washington Post

International reporting: Staff of the New York Times

Feature writing: Katie Engelhart, contributing writer, the New York Times

Commentary: Vladimir Kara-Murza, contributor, The Washington Post

Criticism: Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times

Editorial writing: David E. Hoffman of The Washington Post

Illustrated reporting and commentary: Medar de la Cruz, contributor, the New Yorker

Breaking news photography: Photography staff of Reuters

Feature photography: Photography staff of Associated Press

Audio reporting: Staffs of the Invisible Institute and USG Audio

Fiction: “Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips

Drama: “Primary Trust” by Eboni Booth

History: “No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggle of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era” by Jacqueline Jones

Biography: “King: A Life” by Jonathan Eig, and “Master Slave Husband Wife” by Ilyon Woo

Memoir or autobiography: “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice” by Cristina Rivera Garza

Poetry: “Tripas: Poems” by Brandon Som

General nonfiction: “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy” by Nathan Thrall

Music: “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)” by Tyshawn Sorey

Elahe Izadi contributed to this report.