Florida-based Sun Sentinel has won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of a high school massacre. The leaflet revealed failures in schools and prosecutors before and after the bloody deed in Parkland in February 2018, Dana Canedy said on behalf of the jury at the announcement of the winners yesterday.
At the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a 19-year-old shot dead 14 adolescents and three adults in February 2018. Canedy also mentioned the high school „Eagle Eye“ school newspaper, which published obituaries of the victims.
Scout honored
In another 14 of the 21 categories of the prestigious award, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were honored. Three New York Times reporters won a Pulitzer for an 18-month research into the finances of US President Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal received a price for revelations that Trump paid hush money to two women ahead of the US election in 2016. The „Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“ won for their coverage of the attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh with eleven deaths last October.
The award, which has been awarded since 1917, is named after its founder, the Hungarian-born American journalist and publisher Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911). Last year, among others, the three journalists were honored, with reports in the „New York Times“ and in the magazine „New Yorker“ the affair of sexual assault by film producer Harvey Weinstein revealed.
Aretha Franklin posthumously awarded
About half a year after her death, soul singer Aretha Franklin was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Franklin has „made indelible contributions to American music and culture for more than five decades,“ Canedy said. Franklin became one of the most successful soul singers of her generation, with titles such as Respect and Chain of Fools, and died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 76 in August 2018.
Canadian musician Ellen Reid also won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera „Prism,“ which deals with the consequences of sexual and emotional abuse. In addition to her career with the band Crash Test Dummies Reid is increasingly active as a solo artist.
