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Nose for News by Sarah Stultz

My sister last week sent me a link to the 2025 Pulitzer Prize list, and little by little I’ve been making way through it.

Reading the awards recap is something I look forward to every year. It makes me proud to be a part of the journalism industry and motivates me to want to do better in my role as a journalist.

As I look through the list, I try to click on the stories that interest me, and before I know it, I’ve found myself going down a rabbit hole or two. Some of these stories are long, but, boy, are they good.

They’re what I would describe as top-notch journalism — many large projects that required probably hundreds of hours of research and writing, usually by more than one author.

Of particular interest, I found a story by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism organization that writes about criminal justice, about a legal team’s efforts to spare the Marjory Stoneman High School shooter from the death penalty.

I had followed that school shooting in Parkland, Florida, after it took place in 2018 but had not read much about it in the last few years.

It was just fascinating to me to read all they had learned — not only about the shooter, but about his background and family and about the victims’ families in the case.

I’m envious of the time these organizations can spend on these projects and wish I could dedicate even a portion of the time to come out with something so impactful.

While I recognize that’s not possible at this level of small-town journalism, that doesn’t mean the impact of local journalism is less important. And that’s what keeps me moving in this profession from day to day — the difference that I hope to make for you, our readers, and our community.

Another one of the prizes I was excited to see was for The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit digital newsroom that was created less than three years ago. The newspaper won the Local Reporting prize for a series it published on Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis. The city’s death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly double that of any other large city, and as part of that series, they created a statistical model that they shared with a group of other newsrooms. Their stories and data went on to start new conversations, policies and programs to tackle the overdoses, one of the writers, Alissa Zhu, said in a press release.

At a time when there have been escalating threats to press freedom, it’s exciting to see the world of journalism is alive and well — and growing in some cases, like with the Banner.

I believe there will always be a need for good journalism in society — to educate, hold accountable and even to entertain. I don’t want to imagine a world where that’s not the case.

Sarah Stultz is the managing editor of the Tribune. Her column appears every Wednesday.