Impact is among the key criteria by which the Pulitzer Prize Board determines winners in Journalism, particularly in the Public Service prize category. Today, Harvey Weinstein, who was at the center of Pulitzer-winning reporting by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker and Jodi Kantor, Meghan Twohey and their colleagues at The New York Times, was sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York. Weinstein still awaits trial in Los Angeles.
In response to the news, Kantor tweeted: "23 years for Harvey Weinstein. @mega2e and I just witnessed it for ourselves. Weinstein was cuffed to his wheelchair then rolled away. The women who testified sobbed afterwards. Irwin Reiter, his accountant of 30 yrs who secretly helped us break the story, sat just behind."
"Today’s outcome in Harvey Weinstein’s New York trial is the result of the decisions of multiple women to come forward to journalists and to prosecutors at great personal cost and risk. Please keep those women in your thoughts today," Farrow said on Twitter shortly after Weinstein was found guilty last month.
Kantor tweeted at that time: "'I'm Harvey Weinstein-- you know what I can do.'
Weinstein, whose signature throughout forty years of allegations was lack of accountability, has been declared guilty on two counts."
The Pulitzer board commended their work in 2018, describing it as "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."