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The 2020 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Local Reporting
For a distinguished example of reporting on significant issues of local concern, demonstrating originality and community expertise, using any available journalistic tool, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

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.

Staff members from The Baltimore Sun (from left: Meredith Cohn, Amanda Kell and Jean Marbella) accept the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. (Jose Lopez/The Pulitzer Prizes)

Winning Work

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Local Reporting in 2020:

Peter Smith, Stephanie Strasburg and Shelly Bradbury of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For an unprecedented investigation of child sexual abuse and cover-ups in the insular Amish and Mennonite communities.

Staff of The Boston Globe

For its engaging approach to exposing socioeconomic inequities by surveying the city’s brightest public high school students a decade after graduation.

The Jury

Terry Baquet(Chair)

Former Director of Print, The Times-Picayune

Ted Appel

Managing Editor, The Press Democrat

Sandra A. Banisky

Abell Professor in Baltimore Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park

Anica Butler

Ideas Editor, The Boston Globe

Sewell Chan

Deputy Managing Editor for News, Los Angeles Times

Karen Magnuson

Executive in Residence, Rochester Institute of Technology

Andrea Valdez

Editor-in-Chief, The Texas Observer

Winners in Local Reporting

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.
2016

Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick and Lisa Gartner

For exposing a local school board's culpability in turning some county schools into failure factories, with tragic consequences for the community. (Moved by the Board from the Public Service category, where it was also entered.)
See All Local Reporting

2020 Prize Winners

Commentary

Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times

For a sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.
Criticism

Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times

For work demonstrating extraordinary community service by a critic, applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.
See All 2020 Winners