Pulitzer Prize & Remembering Alex Laskaris

Last Friday, we were awarded with the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside our partners on the investigation: The Marshall Project, *IndyStar*, and *AL.com*. And, alongside *The Intercept* and Topic Studios, our *Somebody* Podcast was named a Pulitzer finalist in Audio Reporting.

The Invisible Institute was awarded a 2021 Pulitzer Prize in the National Reporting category and was named a finalist in the Audio Reporting category.

Together with The Marshall Project, Alabama Media Group, and Indianapolis Star, we received the Pulitzer for a yearlong investigation into the use of police dogs as weapons titled “Mauled.” Invisible Institute reporters on the project were Andrew Fan, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, and Ellen Glover.

“I think this award is part of a broader recognition of the far-reaching impacts of police violence in people’s lives, especially Black people,” observed Andrew. “Our reporting on dogs was one of many projects trying to reckon with the violence of day-to-day policing and we hope it can play a role as people work to build a different future.”

A remarkable moment in the history of the organization, this award is also a benchmark in the emergence of nonprofit journalism as a critical element of the larger media ecosystem. (The other finalists in the National Reporting category were the staff of the New York Times and the staff of the Wall Street Journal.)

Together with The Intercept and Topic Studios, Invisible Institute was also named a finalist in the Audio Reporting category for the investigative podcast series Somebody. The team on that project included Alison Flowers, Bill Healy, Sarah Geis, and host Shapearl Wells, the mother of 22-year-old murder victim Courtney Copeland, and many others.

The Pulitzer judges described the podcast as “a dogged and searing investigation of the murder of a young Black man in Chicago and the institutional indifference surrounding it.”

After Somebody was announced as a Pulitzer finalist, Alison paid tribute to Shapearl: “We are grateful, above all, to Shapearl for her trust. This podcast is not just about what happened to her son. It’s about the powerful moral perspective of motherhood as the basis for extraordinary resistance.”

David Eads of the Marshall Project, with whom we shared the Pulitzer for National Reporting, reminded me of another investigative series on a mother abused by the police. Back in 2005, working out of a vacant unit in a public housing high-rise, I began reporting on the ordeal of Diane Bond, a Stateway Gardens resident repeatedly tormented by a rogue police crew. David, then a college student at the beginning of a career in journalism that would take him to the Chicago Tribune, NPR, ProPublica, and ultimately the Marshall Project, designed and produced the vehicle via which the reporting was published--the first incarnation of the View From The Ground. The series ultimately grew to seventeen articles, collected under the title "Kicking the Pigeon.”

While the series was in progress, Michael Miner, media critic at the Chicago Reader, wrote about “Kicking the Pigeon” in a column titled “He Walks the Line.” He questioned whether I was really a journalist. What he found fishy was the degree to which my reporting focused on the lived experience of Ms. Bond as opposed to the official narrative of the police. I mention this not as a reflection on Mike Miner--I miss his acute take on Chicago media--but rather as a measure of shifts in journalism over the decade and a half since. For today it is precisely the Invisible Institute’s sustained focus on the lived experience of those most directly affected by oppressive policies and practices that has been so widely and generously honored.

Awards necessarily look backward. They celebrate completed work. I look forward to sharing in future newsletters some of the projects my colleagues are developing in our shop. For I woke up the day after the Pulitzer announcement, as I do every day, with the restless sense that we haven’t broken the story yet and full of appetite for the work that lies ahead.

Jamie Kalven
June 18, 2021

Earlier this month, Invisible Institute lost a key collaborator and close friend, Alex Laskaris. As the lead designer of the Citizens Police Data Project since its start more than five years ago, Alex’s fingerprints are everywhere. Everyone who has ever used CPDP has interacted with a screen shaped by his craft.

“Alex taught me so much,” recalled Rajiv Sinclair. “I learned from him in the best possible mode of learning: by working closely together with an expert craftsman on something that we both agreed is worth caring about. As a friend, I learned from him about how to listen and how to embrace difficult questions together.”

Harry Backlund of City Bureau, who grew up with Alex and first introduced us to him, described Alex as “a world-class designer with uncompromising integrity who cared deeply and personally about democratizing access to civic power.”

His daily design co-conspirator, Sukari Stone, reflected: “As I continue to grapple with this devastating loss, I feel endlessly grateful to have been able to work so closely with and learn from Alex for the past four years. His resolve, passion, and expertise have helped shape me as a designer and colleague.”

We will miss our friend and collaborator.