Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Wins Pulitzer, none for Strib or Pi-Press

​The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism were announced this morning, and the only metro daily newspaper in the Midwest to win was the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in the explanatory journalism category.

Staffers Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar, and Alison Sherwood were commended for a three-part series on the use of genetic technology to save five-year-old Nicholas Volker from a mysterious disease.

This is the third time in the past four years and the second time in a row that the Journal Sentinel has hauled in the highest honor in newspaper journalism. And it won the prize this year in photography, video, and multimedia features as well as for its for its text narrative.

​The Pulitzer committee bypassed two very big dogs in American journalism in bestowing the award on the Milwaukee paper: the Wall Street Journal for a deep dive on fraud and abuse in Medicare, probing previously concealed government databases to identify millions of dollars in waste and corrupt practices; and the Washington Post for showing how the military is using trauma surgery and brain science to reduce battlefield fatalities.

Neither the Star Tribune nor the Pioneer Press were among the winners this year. The Star Tribune won a Pulitzer in 1990 for an investigation into the St. Paul Fire Department. The Pioneer Press won the award in 2000 for its expose of fraud in the U of M basketball program.

Read: ">the Journal Sentinel's "One in a Billion" here, and the paper's story behind the story here.