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Aaron Parsley of Texas Monthly
For his extraordinary personal account of survival and loss written days after the historic Central Texas floods that tore the writer’s house out from under him and his family, taking the life of his nephew.
Love Texas Monthly, this was a tough read after that awful flood incident:
> Staff of Pablo Torre Finds Out
> For a pioneering and entertaining form of live podcast journalism that investigated how the Los Angeles Clippers seemingly evaded the NBA’s salary cap rules by funneling money to a star player through an environmental startup.
This is still being investigated by the NBA. I'm curious how it'll play out, but it's not a good look for the league.
I’ve been gradually reading prior Pulitzer winners for fiction and I have to say I haven’t hit a bad one yet. Maybe I’ll try and read this years before it’s several decades old.
Once again, a moment of gratitude for the San Francisco Chronicle. In a time when local news is mostly gutted, I'm grateful to live in the rare mid-size city that has a robust local paper. Real investigative reporting, a serious local political beat, and features that win Pulitzer prizes. Plus a great sports section and restaurant critics!
The conclusion that "insurance companies using algorithmic tools have failed Californians who lost their homes to fire by systematically undervaluing their properties" seems pretty dubious to me. Everyone is shooting the messenger by getting angry at the insurance companies when fire insurance isn't cheaper. Meanwhile many insurance companies are leaving California entirely.
It isn't the "evil algorithms" at fault here - it's the high risk of fire.
Looks like the Oscars of reporting, mostly awarded to mainstream mouthpieces, ignoring any journalism of real depth that challenges anything outside the overton window.
Serious question: has anyone who makes this argument actually tried to compile a list? Every time I've seen the attempt, half the picks are partisan outlets, half are fringe, and the rest turn out to be already mainstream.
Journalists were eating well this year with Trump's never-ending scandals. WAPO's entire nominated work is about Epstein Files, some other winners had his money-making scheme off crypto and stock manipulation.
True, but there are a heck of a lot of issues they are not touching as well. The whole age verification/digital ID thing does not feature although tech surveillance does (and I think these tie in).
IIRC "nominated" and "won" are different things -- WAPO won for their Trump coverage. Though fair point that a lot of the winners this year do circle back to him one way or another.
Pablo Torre and Julie K. Brown are the only truly deserving winners here. Anyone willing to break down and discuss the Epstein case is a real journalist and both of them have done exactly that. The Times and other major outlets were reticent to cover it, and have since routinely run puff pieces. Riley Walz and the folks at Jmail deserve a lot of credit as well.
Will say if you haven't checked pablo's clippers saga both hilarious in the way it was covered and that Balmer and Co thought that they could get away with this! Hamburger!!
Some evidence as to why Brown did not originally win the Pulitzer, instead this citation a few years too late:
>Brown’s “Perversion of Justice” series won a prestigious George Polk award. The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz, the attorney and television personality who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.
The Epstein coverage thing is a good example of outlets sitting on stories for years. Brown had that material in 2018. Eight years to get recognized properly is a long time to wait.
Bet half these local paper sites are flatlining right now from the traffic. One VPS, no CDN, shared hosting. Happened to the Chronicle a few years back on a big story. Nobody plans for spikes.
Love Texas Monthly, this was a tough read after that awful flood incident:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-flood-first...