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The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Local Reporting

Finalist: Lulu Ramadan of The Palm Beach Post and Ash Ngu, Maya Miller and Nadia Sussman of ProPublica

For a comprehensive investigation, including interactives and graphics, that revealed dangerous air quality during Florida’s sugar cane harvest season and prompted significant reforms.

Nominated Work

Biography

Lulu Ramadan was an investigative reporter at The Palm Beach Post, where she worked from 2015 to 2021 covering government accountability, voting rights and environmental justice. She’s now an investigative reporter at The Seattle Times and distinguished fellow with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network.

Ash Ngu is a reporter, designer and developer with ProPublica’s news apps team. They previously worked at The New York Times and The Pudding.

Maya Miller is an engagement reporter with ProPublica focusing on health, environment and housing. She’s collaborated across and beyond the newsroom on series about aggressive medical debt collection practices, housing and evictions, as well as toxic air pollution and health. The impact of her reporting includes a national doctors’ group announcing it would stop suing patients for medical debt, state legislators introducing a bill to repeal a criminal eviction statute, as well as federal lawmakers and officials promising investigations and reforms.

Her reporting within ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, which has included working with residents to monitor air quality and crowdsourcing real-time reactions to air pollution, has contributed to several awards. These include a 2020 Selden Ring Award and Gerald Loeb Award (“Profiting from the Poor”), as well as a 2021 finalist for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics and the Gather Award in Engaged Journalism (“State of Denial”). Her work has appeared in NBC Investigations, Chicago magazine and the Chicago Tribune, among others. She lives in New York and speaks Spanish.

Nadia Sussman is a video journalist at ProPublica, creating short- and long-form visual stories for ProPublica investigations. From 2013 to 2017, Nadia was based in Brazil, where she shot and edited videos for outlets including The New York Times, BBC and The Wall Street journal. Nadia has worked throughout Latin America and the United States, covering stories including killings by police in Rio’s favelas and Brazil’s Zika crisis. Her work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, the Northern Short Course and the Sidney Hillman Foundation. Prior to working in journalism, Nadia was an investigator for death row habeas corpus appeals in California.

Winners

Prize Winner in Local Reporting in 2022:

Madison Hopkins of the Better Government Association and Cecilia Reyes of the Chicago Tribune

For a piercing examination of the city’s long history of failed building- and fire-safety code enforcement, which let scofflaw landlords commit serious violations that resulted in dozens of unnecessary deaths. Local Reporting

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Local Reporting in 2022:

Tony Cook, Johnny Magdaleno and Michelle Pemberton of The Indianapolis Star

For their critical examination of Indiana’s “Red Flag” gun law, identifying numerous instances where police and prosecutors had failed to understand and enforce the law.

The Jury

Kathleen Kingsbury(Chair)*

Opinion Editor, The New York Times

Andy Alford

Director of Editorial Recruitment, Training and Career Development, The Texas Tribune

Robert Gehrke

News Columnist, The Salt Lake Tribune

Anita Kumar

Senior Editor, Standards and Ethics, Politico

Mitch Pugh

Executive Editor, Chicago Tribune

Ray Rivera

Executive Editor, The Oklahoman

Marlon A. Walker

Managing Editor, Local, The Marshall Project

Winners in Local Reporting

2021

Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi of the Tampa Bay Times

For resourceful, creative reporting that exposed how a powerful and politically connected sheriff built a secretive intelligence operation that harassed residents and used grades and child welfare records to profile schoolchildren.
2020

Staff of The Baltimore Sun

For illuminating, impactful reporting on a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.
2019

Staff of The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

For a damning portrayal of the state’s discriminatory conviction system, including a Jim Crow-era law, that enabled Louisiana courts to send defendants to jail without jury consensus on the accused’s guilt.
2018

Staff of The Cincinnati Enquirer

For a riveting and insightful narrative and video documenting seven days of greater Cincinnati's heroin epidemic, revealing how the deadly addiction has ravaged families and communities.
See All Local Reporting

2022 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic

For an unflinching portrait of a family’s reckoning with loss in the 20 years since 9/11, masterfully braiding the author's personal connection to the story with sensitive reporting that reveals the long reach of grief.
See All 2022 Winners