Colin Dwyer, Arts & Life, April 15, 2019<\/p>\n
Before Dana Canedy got down to the business of announcing the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, the administrator offered an unusual aside.<\/p>\n
“I want to break with tradition and offer my sincere admiration for an entry that did not win, but that should give us all hope for the future of journalism in this great democracy,” Canedy told the journalists assembled at Columbia University in New York City.<\/p>\n
The entry was from the Eagle Eye<\/em>, the student newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman killed 17 people last year. There, in the aftermath of the violence, the student journalists had to grapple with their immense grief in crafting 17 obituaries for slain friends and coaches.<\/p>\n “These budding journalists remind us of the media’s unwavering commitment to bearing witness even in the most wrenching of circumstances, in service to a nation whose very existence depends on a free and dedicated press,” Canedy explained. “There is hope in their example even as security threats to journalists are greater than ever and there is hope even if some wrongly degrade the media as the enemy of the very democracy it serves.”<\/p>\n The staff of the Eagle Eye <\/em>didn’t win a Pulitzer. But it did set the tone for the crop of Pulitzer Prize winners to come, many of whom faced down threats \u2014 both verbal and physical \u2014 in an increasingly fraught environment for the media in the U.S. and abroad.<\/p>\n (Want to see the full list of winners right away? … watch the full ceremony using the video<\/a> embedded below.)<\/p>\n