Quarter 2
2020 Highlights

Highlights include:

In “The Bus that Never Arrived,” published in the Peruvian investigative news outlet Ojo Publico, photojournalist Musuk Nolte documented the desperate lives of migrants in Lima who have nowhere to stay and no means to go back to their rural villages. They are stranded as the pandemic sweeps through their country. 

In a deeply reported explanatory story for Science, Meredith Wadman, Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Catherine Matacic explored ongoing clinical research into the full effects of coronavirus on the body. The virus attacks the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain. “Its ferocity,” one doctor said, “is breathtaking and humbling.”

As part of their global series on the groups most vulnerable to the pandemic, AP reporters Tim Sullivan and Felicia Fonseca reported on the terrible toll COVID-19 is taking on the Navajo Nation: “If Navajo Nation were its own state, it would have the highest per-capita rate of confirmed positive coronavirus cases in the country, behind only New York.” Being a close-knit community is one of the factors that put the Navajo at risk, but it might also be what helps them beat the pandemic. 

Philadelphia is the poorest large city in the U.S., and women make up more than half of the poor—the majority of them women of color. The 19th, a start-up nonprofit outlet, is teaming up with The Philadelphia Inquirer on a series that highlights how women confront the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. Stories have featured pastors, teachers, store owners, and Philly’s first black woman police chief, Danielle Outlaw. The 19th initiative has attracted attention from media analysts including the Nieman Lab who profiled how The 19th has moved forward with a launch amidst a global pandemic. 

In the fierce global battle to acquire ventilators and other life-saving medical equipment, smaller countries like Paraguay face explosive costs, no-bid contracts, and the prospect of simply lacking enough equipment to treat its citizens. Investigative reporters in 13 Latin American countries have joined forces in a project called “Centinela” to follow the money and hold governments and other powerful actors to account during the crisis. 

Residents of the 63106 zip code in St. Louis rank at the bottom of health statistics in Missouri. On average, these citizens die younger than almost everyone else in metropolitan St. Louis. In Project 63106, reporters with the nonprofit organization Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson are teaming up with legacy media, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Public Radio, the Riverfront Times, and the St. Louis American, to follow families living in these neighborhoods and chronicle their challenges and survival strategies during the crisis. 

Learn more about our COVID-19 responses across our programs.

The K-12 education team has pivoted to be as useful as possible to teachers and students during the coronavirus pandemic. We surveyed nearly 100 teachers immediately and acted quickly, adjusting lessons to make them more useful for home learning, scaling up virtual journalist visits and teacher professional development training, developing instructional videos in partnership with our grantees that teach reporting skills, and holding large-scale public webinars. Some highlights:

Virtual journalist visits and webinars for teachers & students:
Over 600 students undertaking distance learning have connected with journalists through some 30 virtual visits. Meanwhile, we have launched a new series of webinars open to students anywhere that highlight under-reported stories of community resilience, as well as a suite of professional development webinars for educators. These events have reached an additional 1,500 students and educators. 

Fighting Words Poetry Contest:
The 2020 Fighting Words Poetry Contest deadline passed on May 15. Over 950 students from seven countries, 29 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia entered poems that elevate under-reported stories. This is more than double the number of last year's entries. An additional 422 students connected via virtual workshops.

Creative Collaborations:
Our virtual workshops and digital resources have inspired new partnerships that will ultimately connect thousands of students and educators across the country to the Center’s digital resources. An archived webinar developed in partnership with the American Federation of Teachers to introduce The 1619 Project from The New York Times Magazine has been streamed by over 1,000 educators. 

The Chicago Teachers Union launched a daily public television series for students by featuring videos produced by Center, and will continue to share Center-produced videos through the end of the school year. 

The DC Public Schools Office of Family Engagement will collaborate with our education staff to lead a live-streamed event introducing families to the Everyday D.C. project, and how photojournalism can encourage family collaboration at home. 

University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin and Northwestern University have contracted Pulitzer Center to lead Professional Development virtual conferences for their educator networks throughout the month of June.

The Pulitzer Center has always embraced an approach to achieving our mission that cuts across our journalism, education, outreach, development and administration teams. The simultaneously disconnected and hyper-connected reality of our current situation has amplified that approach—inspiring new paths and strategies for collaboration, ways of imagining how we tell our story across digital landscapes and connect with new audiences, and developing a common vision for the future that reflects our entire team’s values.

We’re moving forward with a redesign of our website in 2020 and the release of the Rainforest Journalism Fund site in the coming months, with a focus on capturing the strength and complexity of the hybrid organization we are in clear and compelling ways.

The entire staff has been actively involved in the development of a detailed Pulitzer Center policy on diversity, equity and inclusion to ensure we reflect our values in the work we advance both externally and internally.

The entire staff has also been busy re-imagining the Pulitzer Center’s operations while continuing to stay true to our mission—including our newest members who have yet to step foot inside our physical office! We’re listening to the needs of our partners across the communities we serve: from journalists and editors to educators and students—and the public. And we’re learning from the diverse voices within our organization about their vision for how we can best achieve our goals now and in the future.

We have met the COVID moment across our programs but this is more than a moment we are experiencing. Our mission to raise awareness of underreported stories that resonate now, and continue to have relevance for years to come, is more critical than ever. While our team is physically apart, we’re working together to continue advancing the public good we committed to nearly 15 years ago—for many more years to come.

Support for the Pulitzer Center in 2020 came from the MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, Humanity United, Rockefeller Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Ar­nold Ventures, Art for Justice Fund, Julian Grace Foundation, Facebook Journalism Project, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Henry L. Kimelman Foundation, Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Poklon Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Trellis Charitable Fund, The Miami Foundation as part of the NewsMatch initiative, PIMCO Foundation, the Fore River Foundation, and our Campus Consortium partners schools.

This broad mix of funding, along with continued core support from members of the Pulitzer family and many other generous individuals, assures the independent journal­ism essential to our success. We are grateful to all who have sustained our work. We hope that others will join.