New Yorker wins Pulitzer for Ronan Farrow’s Harvey Weinstein story

Ronan Farrow was among a trio of journalists who won their outlets Pulitzer Prizes for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal with reporting that galvanized the #MeToo movement and set off a worldwide reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace.

The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service was split by The New York Times and The New Yorker for their reporting which outed Weinstein as an alleged sexual predator, it was announced Monday.  

In stories that appeared within days of each other in October 2017, The Times and The New Yorker reported that movie mogul Weinstein faced allegations of sexual harassment and assault from a multitude of women in Hollywood and had secretly paid settlements to keep the claims from becoming public. 

Ronan Farrow’s (left) reporting which outed Harvey Weinstein as an alleged sexual predator and ran in The New Yorker won a Pulitzer Prize for public service, it was announced Monday

In Farrow's tweet acknowledging the Pulitzer Prize win, he seemed to slam his former news outlet, NBC News, which had declined to run the story, leading him to go to The New Yorker

In Farrow’s tweet acknowledging the Pulitzer Prize win, he seemed to slam his former news outlet, NBC News, which had declined to run the story, leading him to go to The New Yorker

Pulitzer judges said that The New Yorker’s Farrow and The Times’ Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, produced ‘explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators’ and forced the issue of sexual abuse into the open.

The public service award could have been a win for NBC News, however, as Farrow initially began investigating the claims against Weinstein while he was a contributing correspondent for NBC News. 

Farrow’s expose wound up running in the The New Yorker in October, several months after NBC News bosses declined to run the story, reportedly because they’d decided it didn’t meet their editorial standards at the time Farrow had pitched it to them.  

In a tweet acknowledging the Pulitzer Prize win, Farrow seemingly slammed the NBC News execs who canned his story when he wrote, ‘Grateful for every brave source, for Jodi and Megan, and for a tireless @NewYorker team that stood by this story when others tried to bury it.’ 

Farrow didn’t have any hard feelings for his former NBC News investigative team producer, Rich McHugh, who he had worked with for months while reporting out the story prior to taking it to The New Yorker.

‘And a special thanks must go to @RichMcHughNBC, who defied orders and put everything on the line to keep reporting and ensure the evidence saw the light of day. I would have been lost without him,’ Farrow tweeted. 

Farrow tweeted his thanks to his former NBC News investigations producer, Rich McHugh, who he had worked with for months while reporting the Weinstein scandal story

Farrow tweeted his thanks to his former NBC News investigations producer, Rich McHugh, who he had worked with for months while reporting the Weinstein scandal story

Weinstein was ousted from the studio he co-founded and now faces criminal investigations in New York and Los Angeles. He has apologized for ‘the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past’ but denied any non-consensual sexual contact.

The stories’ impact spread beyond Weinstein to allegations against other powerful men in entertainment, politics and other fields, toppling such figures as ‘Today’ show host Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey, newsman Charlie Rose and Sen. Al Franken. 

Men and women, famous or not, have spoken about their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault in what has become known as the #MeToo movement.

‘This moment gets called a reckoning, but we just started telling the truth about old abuses of power,’ Farrow tweeted. 

‘People have been saying for decades that this kind of behavior is endemic in society,’ New Yorker editor David Remnick said Monday, adding that he hoped the stories would ‘help not only bring it to light but change the culture.’  

Weinstein spokeswoman Holly Baird declined to comment on the Pulitzer except to suggest similar recognition should be given to Tarana Burke, an activist who founded the #MeToo movement on Twitter about a decade ago to raise awareness of sexual violence.

New York Times' Megan Twohey (left) and Jodi Kantor's  reporting of the Weinstein scandal was also awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, which they shared with The New Yorker

New York Times’ Megan Twohey (left) and Jodi Kantor’s  reporting of the Weinstein scandal was also awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, which they shared with The New Yorker

Rapper Kendrick Lamar was awarded the non-journalism category Pulitzer for music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prize

Rapper Kendrick Lamar was awarded the non-journalism category Pulitzer for music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prize

Pulitzer Prizes were also awarded to a variety of other news outlets Monday. 

The New York Times and The Washington Post took the award in the national reporting category for their coverage of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.

The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, received the breaking news reporting award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California wine country last fall, killing 44 people and destroying thousands of homes.

The Washington Post also won the investigative reporting prize for revealing decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. The Republican former judge denied the accusations, but they figured heavily in Doug Jones’ victory as the first Democrat elected to the Senate from the state in decades.

One of the biggest surprises of the day came in the non-journalism categories when rap star Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer for music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prize.

The Washington Post (shown) won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for coverage of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the second for uncovering allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama

The Washington Post (shown) won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for coverage of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the second for uncovering allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama

Santa Rosa Press Democrat Executive Editor Catherine Barnett (right) and reporter Randi Rossmann celebrate winning the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the October wildfires in Sonoma County

Santa Rosa Press Democrat Executive Editor Catherine Barnett (right) and reporter Randi Rossmann celebrate winning the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the October wildfires in Sonoma County

The Cincinnati Enquirer won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for 'Seven Days of Heroin,' a week-long examination of the many ways the heroin crisis is impacting their community

The Cincinnati Enquirer won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for ‘Seven Days of Heroin,’ a week-long examination of the many ways the heroin crisis is impacting their community

The Pulitzers, American journalism’s most prestigious awards, reflected a year of unrelenting news and unprecedented challenges for U.S. media, as Trump repeatedly branded reporting ‘fake news’ and called journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’

The New York Times won three Pulitzers and The Washington and Reuters received two apiece.

In announcing the journalism prizes, Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy said the winners ‘uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press, even in the most trying of times.’

‘Their work is real news of the highest order, executed nobly, as journalism was always intended, without fear or favor,’ she said.

A string of stories in The Times and The Washington Post shined a light on Russian interference in the presidential election and its possible connections to the Trump campaign and transition – ties now under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president has called the investigation a ‘witch hunt.’

The Pulitzer judges commended the two newspapers for ‘deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest.’

In other categories, the Arizona Republic and USA Today Network won the explanatory reporting prize for a multi-format look at the challenges and consequences of building the Mexican border wall that was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign. The project included footage from a helicopter flight along the entire 2,000-mile border.

The local reporting award went to The Cincinnati Enquirer for what the judges called ‘a riveting and insightful’ narrative and video about the heroin epidemic in the area. More than four dozen reporters and photographers dove into the drug’s toll over one week.

The Daily Progress photographer Ryan Kelly won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography for this August 12, 2017, showing people flying into the air as a car mowed down protesters at demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

The Daily Progress photographer Ryan Kelly won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography for this August 12, 2017, showing people flying into the air as a car mowed down protesters at demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

Reuters photographer Adnan Abidi won a Pulitzer for feature photography for a series of photos depicting the plight of the Rohingya, including this image of a boy who was shot in his chest before crossing the border from Myanmar, taken on November 5, 2017

Reuters photographer Adnan Abidi won a Pulitzer for feature photography for a series of photos depicting the plight of the Rohingya, including this image of a boy who was shot in his chest before crossing the border from Myanmar, taken on November 5, 2017

A cartoon by Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan of The New York Times, which was part of a series that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning

A cartoon by Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan of The New York Times, which was part of a series that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning

Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters won the international reporting award for their coverage of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly crackdown on drugs, and the news agency’s photographers received the feature photography prize for their images of the plight of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar.

The breaking news photography award went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia, who captured the moment a car plowed into counter-protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in the college town. The car killed counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer.

Kelly made the photo on his last day at the newspaper before moving on to a job at a brewery. In a text Monday, Kelly described the prize as an ‘incredible honor’ but added: ‘Mostly I’m still heartbroken for Heather Heyer’s family and everybody else who was affected by that tragic violence.’

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a freelance writer for GQ magazine, took the feature writing award for a profile of Dylann Roof, the avowed white supremacist convicted of killing nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dana Canedy, the new administrator of The Pulitzer Prizes, announced the 2018 winners on Monday at Columbia University in New York

Dana Canedy, the new administrator of The Pulitzer Prizes, announced the 2018 winners on Monday at Columbia University in New York

The commentary award went to John Archibald of Alabama Media Group in Birmingham, Alabama, for pieces on politics, women’s rights and other topics. Art critic Jerry Saltz of New York magazine won the criticism award.

Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register received the editorial writing prize for pieces about the consequences of privatizing Iowa’s administration of Medicaid.

Freelance writer Jake Halpern and freelance cartoonist Michael Sloan were awarded the editorial cartooning prize for a graphic narrative in The New York Times about a family of refugees fearing deportation.

The Pulitzers were announced at Columbia University, which administers the prizes. This is the 102nd year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

Winners of the public service award receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.



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