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The 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Local Reporting
For a distinguished example of coverage of significant issues of local or statewide concern, demonstrating originality and community connection, using any available journalistic tool, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi of the Tampa Bay Times

For resourceful, creative reporting that exposed how a powerful and politically connected sheriff built a secretive intelligence operation that harassed residents and used grades and child welfare records to profile schoolchildren.

Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi accept the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. (Jose Lopez/The Pulitzer Prizes)

Winning Work

September 3, 2020

Read the story here.

September 3, 2020
How a Florida Sheriff harasses families: Watch the body-cam video
November 19, 2020

Read the story here.

December 24, 2020

Read the story here.

Biography

Kathleen McGrory is the deputy investigations editor at the Tampa Bay Times. Her reporting with Neil Bedi on a Johns Hopkins children’s hospital unearthed a troubling rate of patient fatalities and led to the resignation of six top hospital officials. It won the George Polk Award for Local Reporting and was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. She joined the Times in 2015 from the Miami Herald.

Neil Bedi is an investigative reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. His reporting with Kathleen McGrory into the alarming death rate at the cardiac surgery unit of a Florida children’s hospital won the George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles Samueli School of Engineering. He joined the Times in 2016.

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Local Reporting in 2021:

Jack Dolan and Brittny Mejia of the Los Angeles Times

For exposing failures in Los Angeles County’s safety-net healthcare system that resulted in months-long wait times for patients, including some who died before getting appointments with specialists.

Staff of The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.

For an ambitious look at how water levels in the city were rising faster than previously thought that also explored the broader social, environmental and regulatory challenges posed by climate change.

The Jury

Chris Davis(Chair)

Executive Editor/Vice President, Investigations, USA Today

Sandra A. Banisky

Abell Professor in Baltimore Journalism, University of Maryland

Dana Banker

Managing Editor, South Florida Sun Sentinel

Alison Gerber

Editor/Director of Content, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Errin Haines

Editor-at-Large, The 19th

Ronnie Ramos

Executive Editor, The Daily Memphian

Maria Reeve

Managing Editor/Content, Houston Chronicle

Winners in Local Reporting

2020

Staff of The Baltimore Sun

For illuminating, impactful reporting on a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.
2019

Staff of The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

For a damning portrayal of the state’s discriminatory conviction system, including a Jim Crow-era law, that enabled Louisiana courts to send defendants to jail without jury consensus on the accused’s guilt.
2018

Staff of The Cincinnati Enquirer

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.
2017

The Salt Lake Tribune Staff

For a string of vivid reports revealing the perverse, punitive and cruel treatment given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah’s most powerful institutions.
See All Local Reporting

2021 Prize Winners

See All 2021 Winners