The staff of the Advocate of Baton Rouge, La., was singled out in local reporting for its “damning portrayal of the state’s discriminatory conviction system, including a Jim Crow-ear law that enabled Louisiana courts to send defendants to jail without jury consensus on the guilt of the accused,” according to the judges. The international reporting prize was awarded to two organizations: The Associated Press’ Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty for their yearlong series that detailed atrocities of the war in Yemen, including the theft of food aid and the deployment of child soldiers; and the staff of Reuters, with contributions from Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, for shedding light on the military units and Buddhist villagers responsible for the systematic expulsion and murder of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, coverage that landed reporters in prison. Hannah Dreier of ProPublica won for feature writing for a series of narrative stories based on the experiences of Salvadoran immigrants on New York’s Long Island whose lives were shattered by a botched federal crackdown on the crime gang MS-13. Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch won the commentary award; Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post won for criticism and Brent Staples of the New York Times won for editorial writing.

Source: Los Angeles Times April 15, 2019 19:12 UTC