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The 2019 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Explanatory Reporting

Finalist: Kyra Gurney, Nicholas Nehamas, Jay Weaver and Jim Wyss of the Miami Herald

For an ambitious explanation of a far-reaching criminal operation in which South American gold mining fueled international money laundering, urban street crime, environmental degradation, child exploitation, drug trafficking and a thriving precious metals industry in Miami.

Nominated Work

January 16, 2018
Dirty Gold/Clean Cash

Biography

Kyra Gurney is a reporter at the Miami Herald, where she has worked since 2016 and where she helped report an award-winning Panama Papers story exposing ties between Argentine officials and a South Florida real estate empire. Before moving to Miami, Kyra was a reporter at InSight Crime, a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet based in Colombia that focuses on organized crime and corruption in Latin America. Kyra has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.

 

Nicholas Nehamas is an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald, where he was part of the global team of journalists that broke the Panama Papers. He previously covered real estate and health care for the Herald. A graduate of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, he joined the newspaper in 2014. He has also written for the New York Daily News, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Record (Bergen County) and Al Jazeera America. He grew up in New Jersey and attended Harvard College. 

 

Jay Weaver is an award-winning reporter at the Miami Herald who has covered the courts, government and politics in South Florida for 25 years. He was a member of the Miami Herald team that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news in 2001 for its coverage of the federal seizure of Elian Gonzalez, who was saved on a raft at sea and swept up into an international custody battle between the U.S. government and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Jay has won numerous national and regional journalism awards, including for exposing New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez’s lies about using performance-enhancing drugs.

Jim Wyss is a prize-winning journalist who has spent most of his career living and working in Latin America for outlets like The Economist, the San Francisco Chronicle and Latin Trade. Since 2011, he’s been the Miami Herald’s South America correspondent based in Bogota, Colombia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University through the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, and was also part of the reporting team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for its work on the Panama Papers.

 

Winners

Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting in 2019:

David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of The New York Times

For an exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges. (Moved by the Board from the Investigative Reporting category, where it was also entered.) Explanatory Reporting

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Explanatory Reporting in 2019:

Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, Emeryville, Calif. (in collaboration with Associated Press, PRX and the PBS NewsHour)

For an exposé of redlining that analyzed more than 30 million mortgage records to uncover discrimination in the banking system, highlighting how skin color still shuts out millions of people from home ownership.

Staff of The Washington Post

For exhaustive data analysis and haunting storytelling that revealed the vast number of unsolved homicide cases in America’s major cities.

The Jury

Gina Chua(Chair)

Chief Operating Officer, News

Lawrie Mifflin

Managing Editor

Matt Murray

Editor in Chief

Tim Nickens*

Editor of Editorials

Akoto Ofori-Atta

Managing Editor

Nate Silver

Editor-in-Chief

Zahira Torres

Editor

Winners in Explanatory Reporting

2018

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.
2015

Zachary R. Mider

For a painstaking, clear and entertaining explanation of how so many U.S. corporations dodge taxes and why lawmakers and regulators have a hard time stopping them.
See All Explanatory Reporting

2019 Prize Winners

See All 2019 Winners