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True story: I was a finalist for a journalism award years ago, and after the winner was announced at a fancy ceremony, the generous individual who endowed the award gave a brief speech, congratulating the winner and, as the endower innocently put it, "the losers."
Ouch. Winners must be declared in these contests, of course. I've won some, so the process has treated me well, but the truth is that often everyone deserves to win. I was on a Pulitzer Prize jury this year, so I'd like to focus on the runners-up in the category, feature writing.
The winner was @hannahdreier of ProPublica, for a superb series of articles on the U.S. government's cruel crackdown on young Salvadoran immigrants. The finalists were @ebruenig of the Washington Post and (jointly) @DDpan and @JenBerryHawes of the Post and Courier.
Here is Elizabeth Bruenig's story, which is astounding, about a rape at her Texas high school and how it went unpunished. Among other attributes, her story is a remarkable combination of first and third-person writing, as well as thoughtfulness. washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/…
You could not imagine a finer work of history and writing than the stories by Deanna Pan and Jennifer Berry Hawes about a 14-year old black boy wrongly convicted and executed for killing two white girls. It's an immensely tragic and great series. postandcourier.com/news/special_r…
And here is Hannah Dreier's prize-winning work, which shows, as the other finalists do, that the foundation of great feature writing is great reporting. features.propublica.org/ms-13/a-betray…
I was largely grateful that the feature jury didn't pick the winner -- that (very hard) job goes to the Pulitzer Prize Board, which chooses the winners or co-winners from the three recommendations made by each jury. My guess is that it was a difficult decision for the board.
Last words, which will sound ritualistic but they're also true: the work of the jury was hard (we considered more than 100 entries) but my lord, what a great group to do that work with. Honestly (and here's the corniest line of all) I learned a lot and truly enjoyed it. 
