Awards and Honors

Our alumni have gone on to win virtually every major industry award from the Pulitzer Prize, Polk Award, Peabody Award, national and local Emmy awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) awards, the Goldsmith Prize, Alfred I. duPont Awards, the National Book Awards and more.

 

PULITZER PRIZE WINNERS

2025: Parker Yesko (’16) and Catherine Winter (’87) were on The New Yorker team that won the Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting for the investigative podcast “In the Dark” about the 2006 US massacre at Haditha. Greg Winter (’00), international managing editor of The New York Times, was an editor on two Pulitzer Prize winning stories: one for explanatory reporting for the investigation that uncovered a campaign of forced disappearances in Afghanistan and another in international reporting for coverage of the ongoing civil war in Sudan. Emma Brown (’09) was part of the Washington Post team that won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News coverage for urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13 attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including detailed storytelling and sharp analysis that coupled traditional police reporting with audio and visual forensics.

2024: Brett Murphy (’16), a reporter on ProPublica’s national desk, won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Judges noted the ProPublica team’s “Groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court to reveal how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel, pushing the Court to adopt its first code of conduct.” Murphy reached out to his alma mater to hire two Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) students Kathleen Quinn (’24) and Marissa Muller (’24) to do Bay Area-based research for the project. ProPublica’s Managing Editor Tracy Weber (’89) was an editor on the series. Sarah Cahlan (’19) was part of the team at The Washington Post that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of stories about the AR-15, the rifle most commonly used in the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.

2023: Serginho Roosblad (‘18), a video producer for the Associated Press, was on the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “Courageous reporting from the besieged city of Mariupol that bore witness to the slaughter of civilians in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” International Managing Editor Greg Winter (’00) and video journalist Yousur Al-Hlou (’14) were on the staff of The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for "unflinching coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including an eight-month investigation into Ukrainian deaths in the town of Bucha and the Russian unit responsible for the killings". Melanie Mason (’10) was part of the Los Angeles Times team that won for Breaking News Reporting for revealing a secretly recorded conversation among Los Angeles city officials that included racist comments.

2022: Sarah Cahlan (‘19), Ariel Plotnick (‘18) and Emma Brown (’09) were among the staff at The Washington Post awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the costs, causes and aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

2021: Michelle Pitcher (‘21) was on the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a year-long investigation of K-9 units and the damage that police dogs inflict on Americans, including innocent citizens and police officers.  Four recent graduates Barbara Harvey (’20), Alex Matthews (’20), Yuriria Ávila (’21) and Chloe Reynolds (‘21)  contributed to the, “courageous, prescient and sweeping coverage of the coronavirus pandemic” that won The New York Times the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.  Austin Ramzy (‘03) was credited for the Times’ victims front page story and “Live Briefing: Coronavirus Death Toll Climbs in China, and a Lockdown Widens.” Andy Mannix (‘15), of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis authored one of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in the Breaking News category. The Tribune's coverage was honored for its, “urgent, authoritative and nuanced coverage of the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis and of the reverberations that followed.”

2020: Tracy Weber (’89) of ProPublica edited an investigation into America’s 7th Fleet after a series of deadly naval accidents in the Pacific that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

2019: Stephen Hobbs (’14) was on The South Florida Sun Sentinel team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, “for exposing failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.” He was also among the finalists in the Breaking News category. Alexandra Berzon (‘06) was on the team at The Wall Street Journal that won the top prize for National Reporting “for uncovering President Trump’s secret payoffs to two women during his campaign who claimed to have had affairs with him, and the web of supporters who facilitated the transactions, triggering criminal inquiries and calls for impeachment.”

2018: New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg (’98), one of the most visible opinion journalists in the country, and part of a team of Times journalists including Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, that won the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Kathleen Lund Coates (’78), Robert Digitale (’79), Julie Johnson (’09), Diane Peterson (’82) and Brett Wilkison (’08) were among the team that covered the Wine Country wildfires, which devastated the North Bay region, earning journalism’s top prize for breaking news.

2017: Carrie Ching (’05) created an animated video depicting the unseen victims of offshore finance for The Panama Papers project with International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reporters that won a Pulitzer for explanatory reporting.

2015: The Seattle Times staff won a Pulitzer Prize for its breaking news reporting of a mudslide in Washington state that killed 43 people in March 2014. The Times staff includes J-School alums Jim Simon (’84), a deputy managing editor for the paper, business reporter Ángel González (’03), and reporter Alexa Vaughn (’11). In the wake of the mudslide, the paper also investigated whether people should have been living in that area to begin with, and if the tragedy could have been avoided. Gregory Winter (’00) an editor for the New York Times‘ international desk, won an award in the International Reporting category for the paper’s coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The Pulitzer board honored the paper for its “courageous front-line reporting and vivid human stories”.

2009: Alexandra Berzon (’06) won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of investigative stories exposing the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.

2008: Chris Jenkins (’00) was on The Washington Post team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre.

2004: James Sandler (’03) won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his work while in J-School on a joint Berkeley Journalism project involving The New York Times, PBS FRONTLINE and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that exposed worker death and dismemberment at an Alabama iron pipe company.