Eli Saslow ’04 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Work with The Washington Post

Eli Saslow, a 2004 graduate of the Newhouse School, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for a series of stories in The Washington Post that chronicled struggles across the country with the pandemic, homelessness, addiction and inequality.

Eli Saslow (Screenshot from Washington Post video)

Winners were announced Monday. The Pulitzer Prize Board described Saslow as having woven “evocative individual narratives … that collectively form a sharply-observed portrait of contemporary America.”

It was the second career Pulitzer for Saslow, who also won in 2014 for explanatory reporting. Saslow graduated from Newhouse with a bachelor’s degree in newspaper journalism.

In talking about his latest work, Saslow, in a video posted on The Washington Post website, said “We ask a ton of people to go spend time with them in the kind of stories that I do to immerse into their lives at really fragile moments, and it takes a lot of courage to say ‘yes’ to that.”

Four people smile and pose for a selfie — From left to right, Washington Post staffers Natalia Jiménez-Stuard and Adam Kilgore pose for a photo with Saslow and his wife, Rachel Saslow ’04. All four attended the Newhouse School. (Photo by Natalia Jiménez-Stuard)

He added that the “great gift of this work is we get to go see it. We get to be there, we get to report, we get to watch. We get to pay attention with the great hope that it will force other people to do the same.”

Saslow recently moved from the Post to The New York Times.

Awarded annually, the century-old Pulitzer Prizes honor outstanding work in journalism and the arts. They were endowed by the late Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the old New York World newspaper. The Pulitzers are awarded by the trustees of Columbia University on recommendation of an advisory board.