Weinstein stories that sparked #MeToo win Pulitzer Prize

Award’s administrator says reports by NYT and New Yorker were ‘explosive, impactful journalism that exposed wealthy and powerful sexual predators’

Harvey Weinstein, posing during a photocall in Cannes, southeastern France, October 5, 2015. (AFP/Valery Hache/File)
Harvey Weinstein, posing during a photocall in Cannes, southeastern France, October 5, 2015. (AFP/Valery Hache/File)

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal with reporting that galvanized the #MeToo movement and set off a national reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace.

The Times and The Washington Post took the national reporting award for their coverage of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential race and contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.

The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, received the breaking news reporting award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California wine country last fall, killing 44 people and destroying thousands of homes.

The Washington Post also won the investigative reporting prize for revealing allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama decades ago. The Republican former judge denied the accusations, but they factored heavily in the special election that Democrat Doug Jones went on to win.

Dana Canedy, the new administrator of The Pulitzer Prizes, announces the 2018 winners, on April 16, 2018, at Columbia University in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The Pulitzers, American journalism’s most prestigious awards, reflected a year of unrelenting news and unprecedented challenges for US media, as Trump repeatedly branded reporting “fake news,” and called journalists “the enemy of the people.”

In announcing the prizes, Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy said the winners “uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press, even in the most trying of times.”

“Their work is real news of the highest order, executed nobly, as journalism was always intended, without fear or favor,” she said.

A string of stories in The Times and The Washington Post shined a light on connections between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 campaign, ties now under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president has branded the investigation a “witch hunt.”

The Russia probe stories were “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically improved the public’s understanding,” Canedy said.

In stories that appeared within days of each other in October, The Times and The New Yorker reported that movie mogul Weinstein faced allegations of sexual harassment and assault from a multitude of women in Hollywood, going back decades, and that he had secretly paid settlements to keep the claims from becoming public.

Canedy said the Times’ Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow produced “explosive, impactful journalism that exposed wealthy and powerful sexual predators.”

The stories led to Weinstein’s ouster from the studio he co-founded, and he now faces criminal investigations in New York and Los Angeles. He has apologized for “the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past” but denied any non-consensual sexual contact.

The stories’ impact soon spread beyond Weinstein to allegations against other prominent men in entertainment, politics, and elsewhere, toppling such figures as “Today” show host Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey, newsman Charlie Rose and Democratic senator Al Franken.

Men and women, famous or not, have spoken about their own experiences of sexual harassment and assault in what has become known as the #MeToo movement.

In other categories, the Arizona Republic and USA Today Network won the explanatory reporting prize for a multi-format look at the challenges and consequences of building the Mexican border wall that was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign.

The local reporting award went to The Cincinnati Enquirer for what judges called “a riveting and insightful” narrative and video about the heroin epidemic in the area.

Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters won the international reporting award for their coverage of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly crackdown on drugs, and the news agency’s photographers received the feature photography prize for their images of the plight of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar.

The breaking news photography award went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia, who captured the moment that a car plowed into counter-protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town. The car killed one of the counter-demonstrators.

In this August 12, 2017, photo by Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress, people fly into the air as a car drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The photo won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, announced on April 16, 2018, at Columbia University in New York. (Ryan Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP)

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a freelance writer for GQ magazine, took the feature writing award for a profile of Dylann Roof, the avowed white supremacist convicted of killing nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

The commentary award went to John Archibald of Alabama Media Group in Birmingham, Alabama, for pieces on politics, women’s rights and other topics. Art critic Jerry Saltz of New York magazine won the criticism award for what the judges called his “canny and often daring perspective.”

Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register received the editorial writing prize for pieces about the consequences of privatizing Iowa’s administration of Medicaid.

Freelance writer Jake Halpern and freelance cartoonist Michael Sloan were awarded the editorial cartooning prize for a graphic narrative in The New York Times about a family of refugees fearing deportation.

The Pulitzers were announced at Columbia University, which administers the prizes. This is the 102nd year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

Winners of the public service award receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.

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