Washington Post Wins Pulitzer For Jan. 6 Coverage

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The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize’s most prestigious award on Monday for its coverage of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Pulitzer Prize for public service is the top prize in American journalism and this year it “recognizes the work of more than 100 journalists across the Post’s newsroom, many of whom contributed reporting from the Capitol grounds that day as well as others who investigated the security failures that contributed to the crisis, the human costs of the attack and the larger ramifications for the nation,” wrote the Post’s Elahe Izadi in announcing the award.

Marty Baron, the Post’s legendary executive editor who retired in February 2021, hailed the prize and said the Post’s work surrounding Jan. 6 reflects “journalistic teamwork at its finest.”

“The skills of every department were deployed. And I couldn’t be more gratified that it is now being recognized with journalism’s highest honor,” Baron added in a statement published in the Post. “It was a privilege to be part of such a remarkable newsroom, which rightly hasn’t let up in its investigation of who and what brought the United States to such a precarious point in its history.”

Other Pulitzer winners on Monday included the Miami Herald, which won the prize for breaking news. The Herald was honored for its real time coverage of the deadly collapse of a high-rise condominium building in Florida.

The New York Times won the Pulitzer for national reporting. The Times was honored for its coverage of fatal traffic stops by police.

The Pulitzer Prize was first given out in 1917, six years after newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer died and established a grant for Columbia University to start a journalism school and create the prizes.