One of the very best moments in John Archibald’s life got here in 2018, when he gained a Pulitzer Prize for columns revealed by Alabama Media Group, the biggest news writer within the state.
He topped that on Monday. Mr. Archibald gained a second prize, for native reporting, as a part of a staff of journalists that included his son, Ramsey Archibald, investigating a municipal police pressure.
“I feel stunned,” Mr. Archibald, 60, stated in an interview because the win was introduced. “It’s a great honor. And to do it with your kid — I’m telling you, that’s gold.”
AL.com’s four-person staff — which additionally included the investigative editors Ashley Remkus and Challen Stephens — took dwelling one of many two Pulitzer Prizes gained on Monday by Alabama Media Group, an astounding feat for a newsroom with roughly 110 journalists. The group additionally gained the commentary prize for columns by Kyle Whitmire, a political columnist who examined how Alabama’s Confederate historical past nonetheless impacts the state at the moment.
As readers abandon conventional print newspapers and company homeowners shut newsrooms, fewer news organizations have the monetary wherewithal to analyze native authorities and preserve top-flight journalism.
AL.com has discovered itself navigating these financial headwinds. Owned by Advance Local, a nationwide newspaper chain, Alabama Media Group used to publish three newspapers: The Birmingham News, Mobile’s Press-Register and The Huntsville Times. Kelly Ann Scott, AL.com’s editor in chief, introduced in February that the corporate would cease printing these newspapers, citing altering reader and advertiser habits, directing readers of these newspapers to AL.com.
But Ms. Scott stated in an interview on Monday that Alabama Media Group had extra journalists than it did 5 years in the past.
“Local journalism matters so much right now in America,” Ms. Scott stated. “It’s so great to see stories and commentary like this by people who love the places they’re from come to the national conversation.”
Ramsey Archibald, 31, an information reporter for Alabama Media Group, joined his father and Ms. Remkus in January 2022, a couple of months into the reporting undertaking. The staff was trying into ideas that accused the native police pressure within the city of Brookside of aggressive policing to extend its income. The tales finally prompted the resignation of the police chief and set off a state audit.
The Pulitzer win is the second for Ms. Remkus, who additionally gained in 2021 for a yearlong investigation into the injury that police canine inflict on Americans. Ms. Remkus stated in an interview that it took a second win for her to comprehend that the primary hadn’t been a fluke. She celebrated her final prize win by adopting a cat, Samuel Pulitzer Seaborn, and he or she’s trying ahead to getting a second rescue after the hubbub subsides.
Ms. Remkus added that she was optimistic about the way forward for native news in Alabama regardless of the corporate’s latest resolution to cease printing newspapers.
“Whether it’s coming in the form of a newspaper or whether it’s coming online, it’s the journalism that matters,” Ms. Remkus stated earlier than pausing to let Samuel into the room. “And I don’t think that the delivery method is stopping us from doing that work.”
Ramsey Archibald celebrated the Pulitzer win on Monday at his dwelling in Birmingham. He stated in an interview that the investigation into Brookside was performed primarily by in-person visits to the city, and cellphone calls and video conferences along with his colleagues, as a result of his firm had not but put a proper return-to-office plan in place. In reality, Alabama Media Group’s employees members in Birmingham are between newsrooms for the time being, stopping the staff from popping champagne alongside cubicles beneath fluorescent lights.
John Archibald stated that he had nervous concerning the prospect of his son moving into the journalism trade, which has been freighted with financial nervousness for the previous a number of a long time. But he stated he knew from expertise that it was ineffective to attempt to stand in his son’s means.
Also: He was out of city on a reporting task when Ramsey Archibald was employed.
“I would never discourage him, because from my own life, I know that the only thing that matters is what kind of feeling you get from your job,” John Archibald stated.
Source: www.nytimes.com