Editorial cartooning Graphic Journalism Pulitzer Prize

Editor & Publisher Reports on Pulitzer Prize’s New Illustrated Reporting and Commentary Category

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D. D. Degg June 7, 2022 1 minute 0 comments

In May, Insider won a Pulitzer Prize, joining a small group of digital-only news organizations awarded journalism’s top prize. But like Politico back in 2012, the recognition came in an unlikely category for an online news organization — cartooning.

Insider won for a piece of comics journalism that told the story of Zumrat Dawut, a mother of three who was detained in a Uyghur internment camp in the Xinjiang autonomous region in China before eventually fleeing to the United States.

“We put it in a comic format because there have never been any images or pictures released of what these places look like,” Del Col explained to The Daily Press in Timmins, Canada. “And so that’s why we thought it would be great to tap out a story in comics form, because we can do representations of what these places look like, what they feel like, and while we can’t get you pictures, here’s a re-enactment of what took place.”

2022 was the first year a Pulitzer Prize was awarded for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.

Rob Tornoe, cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, reports on this year’s Pulitzer Prize where a “[n]ew category muddies distinctions between illustrated reporting and editorial cartooning.”

The new illustration category took the place of the Editorial Cartooning category, which had dated back to 1922. Needless to say, the change didn’t sit well with many editorial cartoonists…