Jerry Saltz Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

Jerry Saltz of New York magazine wins the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for a robust body of work that conveyed a canny and often daring perspective on visual art in America, encompassing the personal, the political, the pure and the profane. Saltz' reaction on Facebook to the Pulitzer Prize for criticism:

Thank you ️️

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​The 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners in 14 journalism and seven letters, drama and music categories were announced on Monday, April 16 at 3 p.m. Eastern.

The 2018 Prize winners are:

Journalism
Public Service
The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow
For 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.

Breaking News Reporting
Staff of The Press-Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif.
For lucid and tenacious coverage of historic wildfires that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, expertly utilizing an array of tools, including photography, video and social media platforms, to bring clarity to its readers — in real time and in subsequent in-depth reporting.

Investigative Reporting
Staff of The Washington Post
For purposeful and relentless reporting that changed the course of a Senate race in Alabama by revealing a candidate’s alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it.

Explanatory Reporting
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.

Local Reporting
The Cincinnati Enquirer Staff
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.

National Reporting
Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post
For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)

International Reporting
Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters
For relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

Feature Writing
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, freelance reporter, GQ
For an unforgettable portrait of murderer Dylann Roof, using a unique and powerful mix of reportage, first-person reflection and analysis of the historical and cultural forces behind his killing of nine people inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

Commentary
John Archibald of Alabama Media Group, Birmingham, Ala.
For lyrical and courageous commentary that is rooted in Alabama but has a national resonance in scrutinizing corrupt politicians, championing the rights of women and calling out hypocrisy.

Criticism
Jerry Saltz of New York magazine
For a robust body of work that conveyed a canny and often daring perspective on visual art in America, encompassing the personal, the political, the pure and the profane.

Editorial Writing
Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register
For examining in a clear, indignant voice, free of cliché or sentimentality, the damaging consequences for poor Iowa residents of privatizing the state’s administration of Medicaid.

Editorial Cartooning
Jake Halpern, freelance writer, and Michael Sloan, freelance cartoonist, The New York Times
For an emotionally powerful series, told in graphic narrative form, that chronicled the daily struggles of a real-life family of refugees and its fear of deportation.

Breaking News Photography
Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va.
For a chilling image that reflected the photographer’s reflexes and concentration in capturing the moment of impact of a car attack during a racially charged protest in Charlottesville, Va.

Feature Photography
Photography Staff of Reuters
For shocking photographs that exposed the world to the violence Rohingya refugees faced in fleeing Myanmar. (Moved by the Board from the Breaking News Photography category, where it was entered.)

Letters, Drama and Music
Fiction
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company)
A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.

Drama
Cost of Living, by Martyna Majok
An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.

History
The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis (Liveright/W.W. Norton)
An important environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that brings crucial attention to Earth’s 10th-largest body of water, one of the planet’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems.

Biography
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books)
A deeply researched and elegantly written portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series, that describes how Wilder transformed her family’s story of poverty, failure and struggle into an uplifting tale of self-reliance, familial love and perseverance.

Poetry
Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.

General Nonfiction
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
An examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color.

Music
DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar
Recording released on April 14, 2017, a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.

Image on top: Jerry Saltz, photo by @celestesloman