The Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal, which features Ben Franklin on one side and a printer at work on the other, is awarded annually to the American news organization that wins in the public service category. Over time, this medal has come to represent the entire Pulitzer program. This week, Columbia University announced the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners, including six alumni from UC Berkeley. Additional members of the campus community were also finalists for this prestigious award.
Announced each May, these prizes are considered among the most coveted awards in journalism, arts, and letters since their inception in 1917. Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer left funds to Columbia University upon his death in 1911 to establish a journalism school and create the Pulitzer Prize. An independent board selects the winners.
This year’s Berkeley-affiliated winners include:
Berkeley Journalism alumni Parker Yesko and Catherine Winter were part of The New Yorker team that won the prize in audio reporting for “In the Dark,” a podcast series about a 2005 incident involving U.S. Marines killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
Greg Winter, another Berkeley Journalism alumnus, was one of the main editors for The New York Times’ coverage of Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Declan Walsh and The Times staff received an international reporting prize for this work. Winter also contributed as a main editor for explanatory reporting that earned a Pulitzer on U.S. failures in Afghanistan.
History alumnus Benjamin Nathans, now a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, won the general nonfiction prize for his book “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement.” His research spanned over two decades into K.G.B case files and personal documents.
At The Houston Chronicle, anthropology alumna Sharon Steinmann and art history alumna Leah Binkovitz won alongside colleagues for distinguished editorial writing on dangerous train crossings affecting communities.
For more information about these winners and other finalists from UC Berkeley, readers can refer to stories published by Berkeley Journalism and articles from its College of Letters and Science.
