Trump assassination attempt, Elon Musk, fentanyl: Topics that won 2025's Pulitzer Prizes

Winners of the nation’s top journalism prize were announced on Monday. Among them was investigative reporting on how fentanyl became a scourge worldwide; breaking news reporting on the assassination attempt of now-President Donald Trump; and reporting on tycoon Elon Musk.

The Pulitzer Board, which has awarded the top prizes for journalism since 1917, announced the much-anticipated Pulitzer Prizes that cover everything from international reporting and breaking news photography to audio reporting and cartoon writing.

“We’re here to celebrate American excellence, American greatness,” said Marjorie Miller, an administrator with the New York-based institution. “What you’ll see in our journalism finalists and winners is courageous reporting and impactful storytelling from unbowed newsrooms.”

Reuters news agency won the top investigative reporting prize for exposing the loose regulations that allowed fentanyl – an opioid 100 times more potent than morphine – to become the leading cause of drug overdose deaths. 

Reporters at The Washington Post won in the breaking news category for their live coverage of Thomas Crook’s assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Doug Mills of the New York Times won in the breaking news photography category for the iconic picture he took of the then-Republican candidate raising a fist with blood streaming from his ear.

The Wall Street Journal won the national reporting award for their coverage of Musk, including how the world’s richest man became involved in conservative politics, his use of drugs and conversations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Other notable winning coverage was reporting from the Baltimore Banner – a news outlet launched in 2022 – on the impact of fentanyl on Black men in the Maryland city; photography exposing torture in Syrian prisons by Moises Saman for The New Yorker magazine; and Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post for her cartoon skewering powerful people, often Trump.

Winners were decided by a panel including Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic magazine, Columbia Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick. 

Stories were published during 2024.

A full list of winners and finalists for 2025 – and dating back to 1917 – is available at the Pulitzer website.

‘Difficult times for media,’ says Pulitzer administrator

Miller of the Pulitzer Prizes announced the winners from Columbia University Journalism School’s World Room, which was also created by the same newspaper publisher the awards are named after— Joseph Pulitzer. 

The board has long announced the awards from the New York City university campus, Miller said, even through “wars, national tragedies and a global pandemic.”

But the awards were announced amid “particularly difficult times for media and publishers in the U.S.,” according to Miller.

Dangers include growing threats of legal harassment of journalists reporting critically on powerful people, banning of books and attacks on the integrity of news reporters.

“These efforts are meant to silence criticism, to edit or rewrite history,” Miller said. “They’re an attempt to erode the First Amendment of our Constitution which guarantees free speech.”

The United States ranked 57th in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders, a journalism advocacy group. That’s a significant drop from 2002 when the press organization began producing its global report and ranked the U.S. 17th overall.

Among North American nations, Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Panama all scored higher. Only Canada, Costa Rica and Jamaica were considered to have “satisfactory” media environments. The U.S. is considered “problematic.”

Scores are based on factors including what types of legal challenges reporters face, what kind of bodily harm they might encounter and whether they are independent enough to report on the government. 

Fresh attacks on journalists in America come amid years of financial pressure and widespread layoffs. 

Over a quarter of jobs in newsrooms were cut between 2008 and 2020, according to the PEW Research Center. Most of the some 30,000 jobs lost were at newspapers, which are going out of business at a rate of about two per week. Digital outlets have replaced around 10,000 thousand jobs, according to PEW. 

Who was Pulitzer?

The annual Pulitzer Prizes were established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in his will, according to the journalism organization.

Pulitzer was a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who originally came to the U.S. as an enlisted soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War, according to The Pulitzer Prizes. He served in the cavalry.

The awards celebrate the outstanding, accurate work of journalists. But as a newspaper owner, Pulitzer was known for publishing sensationalist stories or “yellow journalism” at the New York World which closed in 1931. 

Pulitzer’s other paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, remains in print and is the largest daily newspaper for the St. Louis area with a daily circulation of around 100,000.