ProPublica and Native Reporting Community accomplice The Connecticut Mirror received the Pulitzer Prize for native reporting for what judges described as “a powerful sequence exposing how the state’s distinctive towing legal guidelines favored unscrupulous corporations that overcharged residents, prompting swift and significant shopper protections.” It’s the ninth Pulitzer for ProPublica.
A sequence about how the Meals and Drug Administration has for years allowed dangerous medicine to enter the USA was named a finalist within the investigative reporting class, and a sequence concerning the fallout from the destruction of the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement was named a finalist within the explanatory reporting class. They’re the thirteenth and 14th Pulitzer finalists in 18 years.
In “On the Hook,” CT Mirror reporters Dave Altimari and Ginny Monk uncovered a variety of abuses dedicated by towing corporations throughout the state — due partially to a scarcity of oversight from the Division of Motor Automobiles — and the way Connecticut’s legal guidelines had come to favor the businesses on the expense of low-income residents. Towing corporations might begin the method to promote folks’s vehicles in as little as 15 days if the corporate deemed the automotive to be price lower than $1,500. The window was one of many shortest within the nation, CT Mirror and ProPublica discovered, and meant many individuals who couldn’t afford to shortly pay the towing charges often misplaced their vehicles.
By way of a protracted public information battle, complicated knowledge evaluation by Sophie Chou and Haru Coryne, and revolutionary engagement reporting, the reporters found that tow truck corporations have been drastically undervaluing vehicles in contrast with the guide worth, permitting them to promote autos extra shortly. They revealed that towing corporations usually held on to folks’s belongings, together with work gear and mementos that had sentimental worth, as leverage to get them to pay exorbitant charges. The businesses have been additionally not abiding by a regulation that requires them to carry onto the income of offered vehicles and switch them over to the state so house owners can declare the cash — as a result of the DMV by no means arrange a system to gather it.
Inside 24 hours of the primary story, Connecticut DMV management introduced it was reviewing towing practices, and lawmakers shortly proposed a invoice overhauling the state’s century-old towing statutes. Practically each subject Altimari and Monk wrote about was included within the invoice, which handed in Could 2025 with almost unanimous bipartisan help. Towing corporations should now give folks warning earlier than eradicating autos from residence parking tons until there’s a security subject, settle for bank cards for charges, let folks declare their belongings and wait at the least 30 days earlier than promoting vehicles. A DMV process power created by the legislature to review how towing corporations deal with income has expanded its scope to different elements of the regulation, and simply final week, the state Senate handed a invoice that will create a web based portal so Connecticut drivers can monitor their towed vehicles and require towing corporations to think about the age of towed autos earlier than they’re offered.
“Our investigation of Connecticut towing corporations is precisely what we envisioned after we created the Native Reporting Community,” mentioned Charles Ornstein, ProPublica’s managing editor for native. “Begin with robust native journalists who’ve good concepts, give them the time and sources to pursue them to their fullest potential, add to the combination ProPublica’s top-notch enhancing and specialty groups and watch what occurs.” Because the Native Reporting Community’s launch in 2018, ProPublica has partnered with almost 100 newsrooms supporting in-depth reporting in communities throughout the USA.
In “Rx Roulette,” reporters Debbie Cenziper, Megan Rose and Brandon Roberts uncovered how a secret group contained in the FDA has quietly allowed harmful drugmakers to proceed promoting generic medicines from recognized substandard abroad factories which were banned from the U.S. market. The company didn’t warn docs or sufferers concerning the exempted medicine and didn’t routinely take a look at these medicine for security or high quality, placing the general public in danger.
The sequence additionally revealed that fundamental details about the place generic medicine are made is fragmented, obscured and successfully inaccessible to customers — making it unimaginable for folks to see if their medicines are made at troubled factories — although generics account for about 90% of U.S. prescriptions. The group, which included members of ProPublica’s knowledge and information apps groups and over a dozen college students from Northwestern College’s Medill Investigative Lab, interviewed greater than 300 folks, filed virtually 40 Freedom of Data Act requests and sued the FDA to acquire information, in the end developing a publicly accessible database of 40,000 generic medicines and their manufacturing unit inspection histories — the primary complete record of medicine shipped from banned factories.
Citing ProPublica’s investigation, the Senate Particular Committee on Ageing has demanded the FDA conduct extra drug testing and alert hospitals and different purchasers when producers with security failures are given exemptions from import bans. Senators are additionally calling for a direct accounting of the exemptions. A bipartisan group of senators launched laws in February that requires drug labels to establish the place the remedy was made, bringing extra transparency and accountability to the generic drug business.
Because the Trump administration dismantled the nation’s long-standing international support system, USAID, ProPublica reporters Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy documented the lethal international fallout and recognized the Trump officers immediately accountable in “The Finish of Assist.” They linked the ensuing hurt, together with deaths of people that trusted the help, to the U.S. policymakers and political appointees chargeable for the cuts. The reporters then traveled to war-torn South Sudan to doc the return of cholera after important companies stopped and to Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, the place greater than 300,000 folks noticed their meals rations lower after the U.S. severed funding for the World Meals Program.
The tales sparked rapid outcry. Specialists, attorneys, nonprofits and lawmakers requested the Trump administration to alter course, and ProPublica’s reporting was cited in authorized filings and congressional inquiries difficult the dismantling of USAID. Rep. Gregory Meeks, rating member of the Home International Affairs Committee, despatched a number of letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing the protection and urgent him to elucidate his declare earlier than Congress that no deaths had resulted from the administration’s actions.
After Barry-Jester and Murphy found that USAID employees have been informed to shred and burn categorised paperwork, authorized specialists filed complaints with the Nationwide Archives, and Democracy Ahead and the Public Citizen Litigation Group filed a movement for an emergency short-term restraining order to cease the destruction of federal information. And after ProPublica raised questions on an Agent Orange cleanup in Vietnam that had stalled because of USAID funding cuts, placing tons of of hundreds in danger for poisoning, the mission acquired some U.S. funds to proceed working.
“We’re proud to be doing work that brings accountability on the state, nationwide and worldwide degree,” mentioned Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief. “Our two finalists and successful entry with The Connecticut Mirror reveal but once more the ability of investigative reporting to show wrongs and spur modifications within the lives of bizarre folks.”
ProPublica acquired Pulitzers for public service in 2025, public service in 2024, nationwide reporting in 2020, function writing in 2019, public service in 2017, explanatory reporting in 2016, nationwide reporting in 2011 and investigative reporting in 2010. Native Reporting Community accomplice Anchorage Each day Information received the Pulitzer for public service in 2020. Examine our different initiatives which were designated as finalists.
Mission Credit
“On the Hook”: Shahrzad Rasekh, José Luis Martínez, Asia Fields, Elizabeth Hamilton, Michael Grabell, Shoshana Gordon, Peter DiCampo, Rachel Molenda, Sarah Blustain, Charles Ornstein, Ken B. Morales, Agnel Philip, Ryan Little, Hannah Fresques, Alissandra Calderon, Olivia Walton, Ariana Tobin, Stephen Busemeyer, Andrew Brown, Anuj Shrestha, Julia Rothman, Grace Palmieri, Kristine Malicse, Gabby DeBenedictis, Diego Sorbara, Emily Goldstein, Colleen Barry, Jack Putterman, Roman Broszkowski and Ryanne Mena contributed to the sequence.
“Rx Roulette”: Kevin Uhrmacher, Ruth Talbot, Alison Kodjak, Nick Varchaver, Alexandra Zayas, Tracy Weber, Caitlin Kelly, Ken Schwenke, Lucas Waldron, Ashley Clarke, Nick McMillan, Carissa Quiambao, Haley Clark, Joanna Shan, Diego Sorbara, Colleen Barry, Emily Goldstein, Lisa Larson-Walker, Anna Donlan, Grace Palmieri, Kassie Navarro, Sam Cooney, Chris Morran, Isabelle Yan, Jeff Frankl, Pratheek Rebala, Andrea Suozzo, Al Shaw, Alec Glassford, Irena Hwang, Nat Lash, Aaron Brezel, Melody Kramer, Alice Crites, Vidya Krishnan and Andrea Smart contributed to the sequence.
College students from the Medill Investigative Lab in Washington, D.C., additionally contributed: Haajrah Gilani, Emma McNamee, Julian Andreone, Isabela Lisco, Aidan Johnstone, Megija Medne, Yiqing Wang, Phillip Powell, Gideon Pardo, Casey He, Lindsey Byman, Josh Sukoff, Kunjal Bastola, Shae Lake, Alyce Brown, Katherine Dailey, Anavi Prakash, Jessie Nguyen, Sinyi Au, Zhiyu Solstice Luo, Kate McQuarrie, Sadie Leite, Victoria Malis, Tianyi Wang, Gabby Shell, Zara Norman and Naisha Roy.
“The Finish of Assist”: Sarah Childress, Jesse Eisinger, Tracy Weber, Stephen Engelberg, Lisa Larson-Walker, Boyzell Hosey, Alex Bandoni, Peter DiCampo, Lena Groeger, Chris Alcantara, Chris Morran, Alexis Stephens, Alex Mierjeski, Molly Redden, Maryam Jameel, Ashley Clarke, Pratheek Rebala, Emily Goldstein, Olivia Walton, Diego Sorbara, Colleen Barry, Brian Otieno, Phoebe Ouma, Le Van, Yiel Awat and Ngoc Nguyen contributed to the sequence. The ProPublica ideas truck was a key element for producing sources.
