“Because this was our neighborhood,” David Shribman wrote on the day a Pittsburgh synagogue was attacked and 11 were killed, “caught in the crossfire of the strains of the global village, and for once — sadly, so very sadly — the hurt was ours, and the victims were ours, and the need to heal is ours.”
Shribman was then the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He lives three blocks from the Tree of Life synagogue.
For the Post-Gazette’s coverage of that tragedy, the newsroom won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news “for immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into shock and grief.”
This is the third Pulitzer win for the Post-Gazette, but the first in quite awhile. Martha Rial won in 1998 for spot news photography, and Raymond Spriglewon in 1938 for reporting.
The win is an affirmation of the role of local news in the community and society, Shribman told Poynter, “of being both above the fray and part of the neighborhood, and of our ability to breathe the same air as our readers and, from time to time, cry the tears of our readers.”
It also comes in what’s been a series of rocky years at the 232-year-old newspaper. The struggles, both before and after the synagogue shooting, include:
- The firing of cartoonist Rob Rogers, whose work was critical of President Donald Trump — and who was a finalist in this year’s editorial cartoons category
- A full-page ad from staff asserting their editorial independence
- Cutting two days of print
- A “bizarre” and “violent” newsroom encounter with publisher John Block
- The promotion of a controversial editorial director into executive editor
- The departure of the managing editor
“No matter what happens to us here, we always put the community first and tried to provide a service to them,” said Jim Iovino, deputy managing editor. “We’re only here because of them and we’re here for them.”
