NEW YORK: The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize in public service journalism Monday for its coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, an attack on democracy that was a shocking start to a tumultuous year that also saw the end of the United States’ longest war, in Afghanistan.
The Post’s extensive reporting, published in a sophisticated interactive series, found numerous problems and failures in political systems and security before, during and after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the newspaper’s own backyard.
The “compellingly told and vividly presented account” gave the public “a thorough and unflinching understanding of one of the nation’s darkest days,” said Marjorie Miller, administrator of the prizes, in announcing the award.
Five Getty Images photographers were awarded one of the two prizes in breaking news photography for their coverage of the riot.
The other prize awarded in breaking news photography went to Los Angeles Times correspondent and photographer Marcus Yam, for work related to the fall of Kabul.
The US pullout and resurrection of the Taliban’s grip on Afghanistan permeated across categories, with The New York Times winning in the international reporting category for reporting challenging official accounts of civilian deaths from US airstrikes in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pulitzer Prizes, administered by Columbia University and considered the most prestigious in American journalism, recognize work in 15 journalism categories and seven arts categories. This year’s awards, which were livestreamed, honored work produced in 2021. The winner of the public service award receives a gold medal, while winners of each of the other categories get $15,000.
The intersection of health, safety and infrastructure played a prominent role among the winning projects.
The Tampa Bay Times won the investigative reporting award for “Poisoned,” its in-depth look into a polluting lead factory. The Miami Herald took the breaking news award for its work covering the deadly Surfside condo tower collapse, while The Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune won the local reporting award for “Deadly Fires, Broken Promises,” the watchdog and newspaper’s examination of a lack of enforcement of fire safety standards.
“As a newsroom, we poured our hearts into the breaking news and the ongoing daily coverage, and subsequent investigative coverage, of the Champlain Towers South condominium collapse story,” The Miami Herald’s executive editor, Monica Richardson, wrote in a statement. “It was our story to tell because the people and the families in Surfside who were impacted by this unthinkable tragedy are a part of our community.”
Elsewhere in Florida, Tampa Bay Times’ editor and vice president Mark Katches mirrored that sentiment, calling his newspaper’s win “a testament to the importance of a vital local newsroom like the Times.”
The prize for explanatory reporting went to Quanta Magazine, with the board highlighting the work of Natalie Wolchover, for a long-form piece about the James Webb space telescope, a $10 billion engineering effort to gain a better understanding about the origins of the universe.
The New York Times also won in the national reporting category, for a project looking at police traffic stops that ended in fatalities, and Salamishah Tillet, a contributing critic-at-large at the Times, won the criticism award.
A story that used graphics in comic form to tell the story of Zumrat Dawut, a Uyghur woman who said she was persecuted and detained by the Chinese government as part of systemic abuses against her community, brought the illustrated reporting and commentary prize to Fahmida Azim, Anthony Del Col, Josh Adams and Walt Hickey of Insider.
Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic won the award for feature writing, for a piece marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks through a family’s grief.
Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star won for commentary, for columns about a retired police detective accused of sexual abuse and those who said they were assaulted calling for justice.
The editorial writing prize went to Lisa Falkenberg, Michael Lindenberger, Joe Holley and Luis Carrasco of the Houston Chronicle, for pieces that called for voting reforms and exposed voter suppression tactics.
The staffs of Futuro Media and PRX took the audio reporting prize for the profile of a man who had been in prison for 30 years and was re-entering the outside world.
The prize for feature photography went to Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Amit Dave and Danish Siddiqui of Reuters for photos of the COVID-19 toll in India. Siddiqui, 38, who won a 2018 Pulitzer in the same category, was killed in Afghanistan in July while documenting fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban.
The Pulitzer Prizes also awarded a special citation to journalists of Ukraine, acknowledging their “courage, endurance and commitment” in covering the ongoing Russian invasion that began earlier this year. Last August, the Pulitzer board granted a special citation to Afghan journalists who risked their safety to help produce news stories and images from their own war-torn country.
Pulitzer Prizes award Washington Post for Jan. 6 coverage
https://arab.news/b3f92
Pulitzer Prizes award Washington Post for Jan. 6 coverage
- The Pulitzer Prizes, administered by Columbia University and considered the most prestigious in American journalism, recognize work in 15 journalism categories and seven arts categories
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
