The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the shooting deaths of 11 people and the wounding of seven others Oct. 27 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
The judges called the staff's work “immersive, compassionate coverage ... that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.”
Congratulations to @PittsburghPG. #Pulitzer #TreeOfLife #GunViolence pic.twitter.com/ql27OmI5AB
— The Pulitzer Prizes (@PulitzerPrizes) April 15, 2019
Editors at the Post-Gazette said the horrendous events of that day made it difficult to fully savor one of the country’s highest honors for journalistic achievement.
“This is not a moment of celebration, it cannot be,” said the executive editor, Keith Burris.
Speaking in the Post-Gazette’s North Shore newsroom moments after the prize was announced, Mr. Burris said the award helped to affirm the lives of the 11 victims and the value of journalists who told their stories.
“The value of members of this news staff doing their jobs, doing their sacred duty, has been affirmed,” he said.
John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief, said, “We have always known that the Post-Gazette’s reporting is first-rate. We did our jobs. But we are sorry that we had to cover this story and sorry it involved the tragic loss of so many innocent lives in a vital Pittsburgh community.”
David Shribman, emeritus executive editor who led the staff when the tragedy unfolded, asked the newsroom to take a moment of silence for the victims.
“We are not so much celebrating as affirming … the job we were put on this earth to do,” Mr. Shribman said. “Let’s dedicate ourselves to the memory of those whose lives were lost.”
The Post-Gazette last received a Pulitzer in 1998, when Martha Rial was awarded the prize for spot news photography.
The Pulitzer judges cited 10 pieces of work by the Post-Gazette published between Oct. 27 and Nov. 10, including stories, photos, videos, a timeline of events, and an interactive that featured staff-written biographies of the 11 people gunned down at the synagogue.
The package included coverage of President Donald Trump’s visit to Tree of Life days after the shootings and stories about accused gunman Robert Bowers.
Sally Stapleton, who was managing editor at the time and helped to oversee the coverage, said, “For me what separated what the PG staff did was not only its real-time accuracy and its immediate, in-depth look at who was behind this tragedy, but the way it served to unite a hurting community.”
The Post-Gazette’s work provided “solace for those who were affected and suffering” in Squirrel Hill, the entire Pittsburgh region and beyond, said Ms. Stapleton.
James Iovino, deputy managing editor, said the entire Post-Gazette staff earned the prize by responding to the shooting minutes after it happened and “covering it for days on end.”
Mr. Iovino was among the staff members who live in the East End blocks from the synagogue and heard police and ambulance sirens in the neighborhood that Saturday morning.
Reporters and photographers who live nearby went directly to the scene and others came to the newsroom “and wanted to know how they could help,” said Mr. Iovino.
“We are forever grateful” for their efforts, he said. Photo images and videos staff members shot that day, he said, “are forever ingrained in my mind. They were our eyes and they were amazing.”
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Tree of Life called the Post-Gazette’s Pulitzer “a wonderful accomplishment” but said it was bittersweet that it was awarded for coverage of the horrific massacre at his synagogue.
“There is nothing to compare to a news organization getting a Pulitzer Prize,” he said. “But regrettably, this was the subject matter.”
For the first couple weeks after the shootings, he admitted he did not have time to read published accounts or watch or listen to broadcast coverage.
When he eventually “was able to find the time and be composed enough to look at them,” he found the Post-Gazette’s stories “sensitive and tasteful.”
While he received -- and continues to receive -- requests for interviews from journalists worldwide, “You were the people on the ground,” he said of the Post-Gazette’s staff. “This is your city and you were able to cover it in a way no one else could have.”
Rabbi Myers praised a headline written in Hebrew that appeared at the top of the front page of the Post-Gazette six days after the shooting.
The words were the opening of the prayer of Jewish mourners.
“That just took my breath away. That a newspaper would publish something like that, it still leaves me speechless.”
Other finalists in the Pulitzer’s breaking news category were the staff of the South Florida Sun Sentinel for coverage of the February 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.; and the staff of the Chico Enterprise-Record in collaboration with the Bay Area News Group for coverage of a California wildfire that took 86 lives.
The Post-Gazette’s top prize carries an award of $15,000.
Rob Rogers, former editorial cartoonist for the Post-Gazette who is now a freelancer, was named as a finalist in the Pulitzer’s editorial cartooning category.
Joyce Gannon: jgannon@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1580.
First Published: April 15, 2019, 7:44 p.m.
Updated: April 15, 2019, 8:36 p.m.