Analysis

Eye on the Prize

May 31, 2016
Illustration by Christie Chisholm

In collaboration with CJR, a team of Columbia Journalism School students transformed our Pulitzer demographics database into an interactive graphic. This project, part of a graduate course on media writing and storytelling taught by the editors of CJR, allows users to explore the Pulitzer data more deeply, examining diversity in terms of individual and aggregate winners, as well as over time, with the click of a button. Users can also see criticism, public service, and international Prizes broken out by publication, topic, and geographic location, respectively. You can learn more about our data-gathering methodology here. The graphic below is a living visualization that can be updated each year when the Pulitzers are announced, allowing CJR to track changes in Prize demographics far beyond 2016.

[Graphic goes here]

Note: The interactive graphic only works on laptop and desktop. 

This graphic was designed by Alexander Spangher, a data scientist at The New York Times who works on personalization, and a part-time student at Columbia Journalism School, where he focuses on data visualization; Julia Barajas, a recent Columbia Journalism School graduate and freelance reporter who plans to cover migration, press freedom, and women’s rights in Mexico; Bernat Ivancsics, a recent Columbia Journalism School graduate and current Dow Jones News Fund digital intern at MSN in Redmond, Washington; and Jianghanhan Li, an aspiring data journalist currently pursuing a dual Master’s in journalism and statistics at Columbia.

The graphic was developed by Spangher, who built it in D3 and worked closely with our digital and site management team to adapt the design to CJR’s internal specifications.

The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.