A Deeper Look at a Pulitzer Prize Winner

The names are in for this year’s Pulitzer Prize recipients, including big national newspapers like The New York Times to online publications like ProPublica.

This year’s winner of the Pulitzer in the section of Local Reporting goes to Frank Main, Mark Konkol and John J. Kim of the Chicago Sun-Times for what the Pulitzer board calls “their immersive documentation of violence in Chicago neighborhoods, probing the lives of victims, criminals and detectives as a widespread code of silence impedes solutions.”

Indeed, local reporting is becoming more and more relevant in the ever-evolving journalism industry. Readers are not buying the paper to learn about an issue several states away or countries away. Readers are buying the paper to learn about the issues that impact their communities. This could not ring more true than in this shocking featured article published in the Chicago Sun-Times, covering the journalists’ investigation into the injustice of a disastrous shooting.

The lead compellingly focuses the story; it’s almost cryptic, cosmic:

“This is the story of why they won’t stop shooting in Chicago. It’s told by the wounded, the accused and the officers who were on the street during a weekend in April 2008 when 40 people were shot, seven fatally. Two years later, the grim reality is this: Nearly all of the shooters from that weekend have escaped charges.”

There is so much confusion and unresolved conflict in this story, that it’s no wonder the Pulitzer board brought it to the attention of readers nationwide. According to the story, “not one accused shooter has been convicted of pulling the trigger during those deadly 59 hours from April 18-20 of that year.”

The journalistic investigation into these unresolved crimes reveals a weakness in the criminal justice system:

“When police “clear” a case, that doesn’t always mean a suspect got convicted — or even charged. Sometimes police seek charges against a suspect, but the state’s attorney won’t prosecute without more evidence. Other times, the shooter is dead, or the victim refuses to testify after identifying the shooter. Cops call those ‘exceptional’ clearances.”

The heart of this story is not so much in the numbers as it is in the names, faces, and moments that brings its essence into the compelling form that won it a Pulitzer. This includes Dontae Gamble, who took six bullets and watched his alleged shooter walk free, Jose Bravo and his alleged gang-shooter “Chops.” All of these specific names and depicted moments paint a striking portrait of the violent street life these people suffer from every day.