Aaron Parsley of Texas Monthly
For his extraordinary personal account of survival and loss written days after the historic Central Texas floods that tore the writer’s house out from under him and his family, taking the life of his nephew.
Love Texas Monthly, this was a tough read after that awful flood incident:
> Staff of Pablo Torre Finds Out
> For a pioneering and entertaining form of live podcast journalism that investigated how the Los Angeles Clippers seemingly evaded the NBA’s salary cap rules by funneling money to a star player through an environmental startup.
This is still being investigated by the NBA. I'm curious how it'll play out, but it's not a good look for the league.
I’ve been gradually reading prior Pulitzer winners for fiction and I have to say I haven’t hit a bad one yet. Maybe I’ll try and read this years before it’s several decades old.
every once in awhile I'm reading a Pulitzer winner (esp. fiction) and at the beginning I'm thinking "how did this win that year?" and then by the end of the book I think "wow, I've never read anything like this before"
i used to read all booker prize nominations and winners. Those were the only fiction i would read.
I feel like all the oganizations have some of directive now to pick social justice theme books. I have no problem with it but i dont want to read books picked with a specific agenda.
> Drama
> Liberation, by Bess Wohl explores the legacy of the consciousness-raising feminist groups of the 1970s
To be honest, I don't think I've ever found Booker Prize Winners that satisfying, for exactly the same reason you put your finger on. Pulitzer's however...!
Once again, a moment of gratitude for the San Francisco Chronicle. In a time when local news is mostly gutted, I'm grateful to live in the rare mid-size city that has a robust local paper. Real investigative reporting, a serious local political beat, and features that win Pulitzer prizes. Plus a great sports section and restaurant critics!
I completely agree, but… mid sized city? The Chronicle centers around SF but I think of it more like a Bay Area paper. It’s market’s a lot bigger than mid sized city.
The conclusion that "insurance companies using algorithmic tools have failed Californians who lost their homes to fire by systematically undervaluing their properties" seems pretty dubious to me. Everyone is shooting the messenger by getting angry at the insurance companies when fire insurance isn't cheaper. Meanwhile many insurance companies are leaving California entirely.
It isn't the "evil algorithms" at fault here - it's the high risk of fire.
The reporting isn't about cost or availability of insurance; it is more about how insurance companies signficantly reduce payouts through a combination of secrecy, coercive practices against adjusters, paying less than standard rates, and not paying for portions of repairs that homeowners should reasonably expect to be covered. It also reported on areas beyond California.
Looks like the Oscars of reporting, mostly awarded to mainstream mouthpieces, ignoring any journalism of real depth that challenges anything outside the overton window.
For anything to do with Israel, you have to hope for posthumous awards and recognition in 50-100 years, but obviously everyone working on this topic is mostly aware they're doing a bad career decision, but the right thing.
What does the past have to do with it? Have you paid attention to his recent work? He's reporting on things that virtually no one else is, e.g. leaks of calls between Ehud Barak and Eptsein as well as Israeli government involvement in wiring Epstein's residence in New York with cameras.
Not to disparage Ryan Grim at all. That's fabulous work. And grimly fascinating, because it means that Israel may have horrifying kompromat on active senior politicians. And the insights into the horrors of Israeli political sausage getting made pretty much confirms what was obvious already, but it's really nice to see a first-hand account. I get it.
But given a choice between a 20 year old spy thriller involving a Prime Minister who retired 25 years ago, and a dead man, versus a revealing exposure of the dystopia we are all going to be living in imminently (whether Chinese or American), I think the balance tips toward the current winners.
Since you seem to know of his reporting, you probably have seen his work, or that of Drop Site, that falls squarely into the category of exposing the dystopia by reporting on a genocide, the profiteering from military contractors and Big Tech, the complaisance from world leaders, the corruption, the media bias.
You can hold the view that other issues (including the NBA) are more important, but pretending that criticism of Israel has any chance of being recognised by a Pulizer prize would be lying to yourself.
It's all so obvious that the Israeli government was explicitly part of the epstein op huh? That's why NYT and WaPo don't report on these things? Yet they get a Pulitzer on an expose on Trump, who no one knew was a bad guy. Got it.
I don't think I've seen even a single mention in any mainstream news source that there is a risk the dirt that Israel has on trump is being used by Israel to blackmail him to do their bidding.
Journalists were eating well this year with Trump's never-ending scandals. WAPO's entire nominated work is about Epstein Files, some other winners had his money-making scheme off crypto and stock manipulation.
True, but there are a heck of a lot of issues they are not touching as well. The whole age verification/digital ID thing does not feature although tech surveillance does (and I think these tie in).
Pablo Torre and Julie K. Brown are the only truly deserving winners here. Anyone willing to break down and discuss the Epstein case is a real journalist and both of them have done exactly that. The Times and other major outlets were reticent to cover it, and have since routinely run puff pieces. Riley Walz and the folks at Jmail deserve a lot of credit as well.
> A waterline-level personal account that makes a disaster real
... when Baby Jessica fell to the well & she really suffered and her parents must have been incredibly miserable, she got more CNN coverage than Rwanda and Darfur, right? And the question is, why does this happen and why do people care so much? And it turns out, there's research on what's called the "identifiable victim effect."
... you would expect it as more lives are at stake, we would care more, maybe in a linear relationship. Or, maybe we would care more in the beginning & there'll be kind of a diminishing return ... But it turns out, the function is different: We care a lot about individual life and care less and less as the pie... as the number of people become bigger.
... Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." And Mother Theresa said in the same spirit, "If I look at the masses, I will never act; if I look at the one, I will." ... It turns out that every time you activate cognition, calculation, thoughtfulness, you turn off the emotion — people care less and give much less.
Dan Ariely (who unironically isn't moved by plight of the Palestinians) also discusses this in the introduction of his book, The Upside of Irrationality.
Will say if you haven't checked pablo's clippers saga both hilarious in the way it was covered and that Balmer and Co thought that they could get away with this! Hamburger!!
Some evidence as to why Brown did not originally win the Pulitzer, instead this citation a few years too late:
>Brown’s “Perversion of Justice” series won a prestigious George Polk award. The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz, the attorney and television personality who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.
Aaron Parsley of Texas Monthly For his extraordinary personal account of survival and loss written days after the historic Central Texas floods that tore the writer’s house out from under him and his family, taking the life of his nephew.
Love Texas Monthly, this was a tough read after that awful flood incident:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-flood-first...
Discussion on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44576352
> Staff of Pablo Torre Finds Out > For a pioneering and entertaining form of live podcast journalism that investigated how the Los Angeles Clippers seemingly evaded the NBA’s salary cap rules by funneling money to a star player through an environmental startup.
This is still being investigated by the NBA. I'm curious how it'll play out, but it's not a good look for the league.
I’ve been gradually reading prior Pulitzer winners for fiction and I have to say I haven’t hit a bad one yet. Maybe I’ll try and read this years before it’s several decades old.
every once in awhile I'm reading a Pulitzer winner (esp. fiction) and at the beginning I'm thinking "how did this win that year?" and then by the end of the book I think "wow, I've never read anything like this before"
I did the same a while ago and completely agree! They're always so good even if it's not necessarily my cup of tea
i used to read all booker prize nominations and winners. Those were the only fiction i would read.
I feel like all the oganizations have some of directive now to pick social justice theme books. I have no problem with it but i dont want to read books picked with a specific agenda.
> Drama > Liberation, by Bess Wohl explores the legacy of the consciousness-raising feminist groups of the 1970s
To be honest, I don't think I've ever found Booker Prize Winners that satisfying, for exactly the same reason you put your finger on. Pulitzer's however...!
This is still brewing, and the Pulitzer Board still has some credibility issues to recover from:
https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/08/05/trumps-defamation-suit...
Once again, a moment of gratitude for the San Francisco Chronicle. In a time when local news is mostly gutted, I'm grateful to live in the rare mid-size city that has a robust local paper. Real investigative reporting, a serious local political beat, and features that win Pulitzer prizes. Plus a great sports section and restaurant critics!
I completely agree, but… mid sized city? The Chronicle centers around SF but I think of it more like a Bay Area paper. It’s market’s a lot bigger than mid sized city.
The conclusion that "insurance companies using algorithmic tools have failed Californians who lost their homes to fire by systematically undervaluing their properties" seems pretty dubious to me. Everyone is shooting the messenger by getting angry at the insurance companies when fire insurance isn't cheaper. Meanwhile many insurance companies are leaving California entirely.
It isn't the "evil algorithms" at fault here - it's the high risk of fire.
The reporting isn't about cost or availability of insurance; it is more about how insurance companies signficantly reduce payouts through a combination of secrecy, coercive practices against adjusters, paying less than standard rates, and not paying for portions of repairs that homeowners should reasonably expect to be covered. It also reported on areas beyond California.
WaPo gets top billing as winners in the "Public Service" category.
"How Jeff Bezos Upended The Washington Post"
https://archive.ph/Je6AH
Fascinating.
Looks like the Oscars of reporting, mostly awarded to mainstream mouthpieces, ignoring any journalism of real depth that challenges anything outside the overton window.
Who do you think would be deserving of an outside-the-window Pulitzer?
Ryan Grim
For anything to do with Israel, you have to hope for posthumous awards and recognition in 50-100 years, but obviously everyone working on this topic is mostly aware they're doing a bad career decision, but the right thing.
He's led Pulitzer-nominated teams before. Not sure this would be the Overton-shifting event you're thinking it would be.
What does the past have to do with it? Have you paid attention to his recent work? He's reporting on things that virtually no one else is, e.g. leaks of calls between Ehud Barak and Eptsein as well as Israeli government involvement in wiring Epstein's residence in New York with cameras.
Not to disparage Ryan Grim at all. That's fabulous work. And grimly fascinating, because it means that Israel may have horrifying kompromat on active senior politicians. And the insights into the horrors of Israeli political sausage getting made pretty much confirms what was obvious already, but it's really nice to see a first-hand account. I get it.
But given a choice between a 20 year old spy thriller involving a Prime Minister who retired 25 years ago, and a dead man, versus a revealing exposure of the dystopia we are all going to be living in imminently (whether Chinese or American), I think the balance tips toward the current winners.
A good choice though. Maybe next year.
Since you seem to know of his reporting, you probably have seen his work, or that of Drop Site, that falls squarely into the category of exposing the dystopia by reporting on a genocide, the profiteering from military contractors and Big Tech, the complaisance from world leaders, the corruption, the media bias.
You can hold the view that other issues (including the NBA) are more important, but pretending that criticism of Israel has any chance of being recognised by a Pulizer prize would be lying to yourself.
It's all so obvious that the Israeli government was explicitly part of the epstein op huh? That's why NYT and WaPo don't report on these things? Yet they get a Pulitzer on an expose on Trump, who no one knew was a bad guy. Got it.
I don't think I've seen even a single mention in any mainstream news source that there is a risk the dirt that Israel has on trump is being used by Israel to blackmail him to do their bidding.
Wow! So much hard work done by these journalists, pursuing truth, facing the pressures of capitalism, and oligarchy in US.
Journalists were eating well this year with Trump's never-ending scandals. WAPO's entire nominated work is about Epstein Files, some other winners had his money-making scheme off crypto and stock manipulation.
True, but there are a heck of a lot of issues they are not touching as well. The whole age verification/digital ID thing does not feature although tech surveillance does (and I think these tie in).
> WAPO's entire nominated work is about Epstein Files
No, it's not. But it is about Trump: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-4
Pablo Torre and Julie K. Brown are the only truly deserving winners here. Anyone willing to break down and discuss the Epstein case is a real journalist and both of them have done exactly that. The Times and other major outlets were reticent to cover it, and have since routinely run puff pieces. Riley Walz and the folks at Jmail deserve a lot of credit as well.
Aaron Parsley's account of the Kerrville flood in Texas Monthly is deserving. A waterline-level personal account that makes a disaster real. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-flood-first...
> A waterline-level personal account that makes a disaster real
https://bigthink.com/videos/why-we-have-more-sympathy-for-ba...Dan Ariely (who unironically isn't moved by plight of the Palestinians) also discusses this in the introduction of his book, The Upside of Irrationality.
Will say if you haven't checked pablo's clippers saga both hilarious in the way it was covered and that Balmer and Co thought that they could get away with this! Hamburger!!
There is a significant chance they do get away with it.
But thanks to the visibility Torre has given it, it'll be a lot harder for the NBA to go light on them.
Some evidence as to why Brown did not originally win the Pulitzer, instead this citation a few years too late:
>Brown’s “Perversion of Justice” series won a prestigious George Polk award. The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz, the attorney and television personality who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/julie-brown-pulit...
The rot runs deep