2018 Pulitzer Prize Winners

JOURNALISM

Public Service
The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow

For explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, bringing them to account for long-suppressed allegations of coercion, brutality and victim silencing, thus spurring a worldwide reckoning about sexual abuse of women.
Finalists: The Kansas City Star



Breaking News Reporting
Staff of The Press-Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif.

For lucid and tenacious coverage of historic wildfires that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, expertly utilizing an array of tools, including photography, video and social media platforms, to bring clarity to its readers — in real time and in subsequent in-depth reporting.
Finalists: Staff of Houston Chronicle; Staff of The New York Times



Investigative Reporting
Staff of The Washington Post

For purposeful and relentless reporting that changed the course of a Senate race in Alabama by revealing a candidate’s alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it.
Finalists: Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch of Miami Herald; Tim Eberly of The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.



Explanatory Reporting
Staffs of The Arizona Republic and USA Today Network

For vivid and timely reporting that masterfully combined text, video, podcasts and virtual reality to examine, from multiple perspectives, the difficulties and unintended consequences of fulfilling President Trump's pledge to construct a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Finalists: Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times; Staff of ProPublica



Local Reporting
The Cincinnati Enquirer Staff

For a riveting and insightful narrative and video documenting seven days of greater Cincinnati's heroin epidemic, revealing how the deadly addiction has ravaged families and communities.
Finalists: Jason Grotto, Sandhya Kambhampati and Ray Long of Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois; Staff of The Boston Globe


National Reporting
Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post

For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)
Finalists: Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting; Brett Murphy of USA Today Network



International Reporting
Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters

For relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
Finalists: Staff of Associated Press; Staff of BuzzFeed News



Feature Writing
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, freelance reporter, GQ

For an unforgettable portrait of murderer Dylann Roof, using a unique and powerful mix of reportage, first-person reflection and analysis of the historical and cultural forces behind his killing of nine people inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.
Finalists: John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post; Norimitsu Onishi of The New York Times



Commentary
John Archibald of Alabama Media Group, Birmingham, Ala.

For lyrical and courageous commentary that is rooted in Alabama but has a national resonance in scrutinizing corrupt politicians, championing the rights of women and calling out hypocrisy.
Finalists: Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker; Steve Lopez of Los Angeles Times



Criticism
Jerry Saltz of New York magazine

For a robust body of work that conveyed a canny and often daring perspective on visual art in America, encompassing the personal, the political, the pure and the profane.
Finalists: Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post; Manohla Dargis of The New York Times



Editorial Writing
Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register

For examining in a clear, indignant voice, free of cliché or sentimentality, the damaging consequences for poor Iowa residents of privatizing the state’s administration of Medicaid.
Finalists: Editorial Staff of The New York Times; Sharon Grigsby of The Dallas Morning News


Editorial Cartooning
Jake Halpern, freelance writer, and Michael Sloan, freelance cartoonist, The New York Times

For an emotionally powerful series, told in graphic narrative form, that chronicled the daily struggles of a real-life family of refugees and its fear of deportation.
Finalists: Mark Fiore, freelance cartoonist; Mike Thompson of Detroit Free Press



Breaking News Photography
Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va.

For a chilling image that reflected the photographer’s reflexes and concentration in capturing the moment of impact of a car attack during a racially charged protest in Charlottesville, Va.
Finalists: Ivor Prickett, freelance photographer, The New York Times



Feature Photography
Photography Staff of Reuters

For shocking photographs that exposed the world to the violence Rohingya refugees faced in fleeing Myanmar. (Moved by the Board from the Breaking News Photography category, where it was entered.)
Finalists: Kevin Frayer, freelance photographer, Getty Images; Lisa Krantz of San Antonio Express-News; Meridith Kohut, freelance photographer, The New York Times



LETTERS, DRAMA & MUSIC

Fiction
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company)

A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.
Finalists: In the Distance, by Hernan Diaz (Coffee House Press); The Idiot, by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press)



Drama
Cost of Living, by Martyna Majok

An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.
Finalists: Everybody, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins; The Minutes, by Tracy Letts



History
The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis (Liveright/W.W. Norton)

An important environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that brings crucial attention to Earth’s 10th-largest body of water, one of the planet’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems.
Finalists: Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, by Kim Phillips-Fein (Metropolitan Books); Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, by Steven J. Ross (Bloomsbury)



Biography
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books)

A deeply researched and elegantly written portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series, that describes how Wilder transformed her family’s story of poverty, failure and struggle into an uplifting tale of self-reliance, familial love and perseverance.
Finalists: Richard Nixon: The Life, by John A. Farrell (Doubleday); Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Alfred A. Knopf)



Poetry
Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.
Finalists: Incendiary Art, by Patricia Smith (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press); semiautomatic, by Evie Shockley (Wesleyan University Press)



General Nonfiction
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

An examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color.
Finalists: Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-America World, by Suzy Hansen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us, by Richard O. Prum (Doubleday)



Music
DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar

Recording released on April 14, 2017, a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.
Quartet, by Michael Gilbertson
Finalists: Sound from the Bench, by Ted Hearne



Special Citations
Special Awards and Citations
There are no special citations for this year.