When did your organization launch and why?
Founded in 2006 by Jon Sawyer, the Pulitzer Center is an essential source of support for enterprise reporting in the United States and across the globe. After working as a foreign correspondent at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for decades, Sawyer came up with the idea for the Center as he witnessed foreign correspondent positions and funding for reporting on under-reported systemic global issues increasingly being cut. The organization began fundraising to support grant-making for journalists and news outlets seeking to produce global reporting on systemic issues, and then realized that the network of journalists and their reporting could have wider reach through an emphasis on public outreach and engagement. The thousands of journalists and educators who are now part of our networks span more than 80 countries. Our work reaches tens of millions of people each year through our news-media partners and an audience-centered strategy of global and regional engagement.
We believe that people and communities who actively engage with systemic challenges will find solutions together. By supporting journalists as they conduct in-depth investigations, produce compelling stories, and engage diverse audiences, we create a ripple effect of world-changing impact. The result? Policy reforms, public awareness, and community empowerment.
What does your organization do? What are its main goals? Main initiatives?
The Pulitzer Center has a bold vision: to be the venue for the world’s most innovative and consequential reporting, with journalism as the key element for mobilizing society through audience engagement strategies. We focus our work on amplifying underreported stories on five focus issues: Climate and the Environment, Global Health, Human Rights, Information and Artificial Intelligence (AI Accountability), and Peace and Conflict.
We support grants to journalists and news outlets for reporting that amplifies awareness of our five focus issues. We also lead Network programs for journalists seeking to collaborate on investigations related to rainforests, oceans, and artificial intelligence.
We make innovative methods and tools available to journalists so they can have a lasting impact on societies worldwide—while connecting teachers, students, youth, influencers, artists, and other professionals with key underreported issues. Along the way, we sustain independent media in some of the world’s most vulnerable spots, nurturing a strong cross-border ecosystem of collaboration in the public interest.
Our programming for educators and students in K-12 schools, out-of-school time programs, colleges, universities and other public education initiatives include presentations and workshops led by journalist-grantees, paid fellowship programs for college students and K-12 educators, contests for K-12 students, free curricular resources that integrate underreported news stories into standards-aligned lessons and units, and dozens of webinars and public events aimed at connecting audiences directly with the journalists covering pressing global issues. By connecting students and teachers with underreported global news stories and the journalists who cover them, we believe that students will strengthen the critical thinking, media literacy, communication, and connection skills they need to inform themselves, cultivate empathy, and take informed action.
What makes your organization stand out? What would you say is the most unique thing about your organization?
The Pulitzer Center takes a comprehensive approach to championing the power of stories to make complex issues relevant and inspire action.
Our grant programs support 200+ reporting projects each year that result in 1,000+ stories from over 100 countries, all of which are available to the public for free on the Pulitzer Center website with the permission of grantees and their host news outlets.
From the estimated 40,000 students and educators we reach annually through our programs and resources, we continue to hear that the stories and initiatives we support help increase critical understanding of how systemic global issues affect individuals. They also help students and educators use news stories to make local connections to global issues, explore solutions, increase understanding of how journalism happens, and clarify the role of journalism in equipping audiences with the information they need to take action.
Impact has been at the center of the Pulitzer Center’s mission of raising awareness and public understanding of underreported issues since our inception in 2006. Recent reporting projects supported by the Pulitzer Center have struck down bad laws, helped end harmful government programs, and borne witness to events and atrocities that otherwise would be hidden from public scrutiny.
We believe in the power of journalism, education, and public outreach to create real-world change. Beyond the readers, listeners, and viewers of the journalism we support, our impact touches the professional and personal development of the news outlets, grantees, local organizations, students, and educators with whom we work.
What are recent projects or new resources that your organization would like to share with other NAMLE members?
A council of educators met in summer 2024 to create resources for students and educators about how to critically engage with artificial intelligence technologies, and use journalism to stay informed on AI accountability. The resources were inspired reporting from the Center’s AI Accountability Reporting Network, and questions shared by over 170 educators in a survey of Pulitzer Center’s K-12 Education newsletter subscribers:
- AI Accountability Classroom Toolkits
- AI Teacher Advisory Council Models Classroom Engagement with AI Accountability News Stories.
All are invited to take a stand for healthy futures, and question healthcare myths, by contributing to the Ode to Healthy Futures poetry initiative. Ode to Healthy Futures is a cross-disciplinary project designed to make health science stories accessible and relevant. After exploring short texts and photos about a health topic, participants are invited to share their reflections, connections, and dreams for a healthier future through lines of poetry. Ode to Healthy Futures workshop guide and submission form.
The 1619 Project launched in August 2019 with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine that included essays and creative works by journalists, historians, and artists exploring the lasting legacy of slavery in the contemporary United States and the underrepresented contributions of Black Americans to every aspect of American society. Over the past five years, we have worked with nearly 100 teams of education professionals in 30 states to create and teach unit plans that integrate the themes and resources from The 1619 Project into their classrooms. The 95 units, including all teaching materials and examples of student work, are available here.
We are also hosting a series of webinars over the next month highlighting the work and learning from educators who developed and taught these resources. Register here for the The 1619 Impact Series.
The Pulitzer Center offers free, virtual journalist visits to 10,000+ K–12 students and educators each year to increase critical understanding of our five focus areas: Climate and Environment, Global Health, Human Rights, Information and Artificial Intelligence, and Peace and Conflict. Register for a visit here.
Arionne Nettles, a Pulitzer Center journalist-grantee and professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications presents strategies for reporting and communicating stories on racial justice to Chicago educators as part of the professional development workshop, “Empowering Students as Historians in Chicago.” United States, 2022. 
A special screening of JUSTICE, the final episode from the Hulu original The 1619 Project docuseries, followed by a special discussion with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Yara Shahidi, moderated by Donnalie Jamnah. 
What are the connections between the work of your organization and media literacy?
Our grants aim to support the production of news stories across diverse media platforms that are rigorously researched and fact-checked, written and designed to engage and connect with audiences, and model how journalists critically approach reporting and communicating complex issues. By supporting these stories, we hope to amplify the quantity of accurate, relevant and nuanced media that audiences are accessing. Through our audience engagement initiatives, we aim to increase opportunities for audiences to connect directly with journalists to critically analyze how news stories are researched and produced. We also hope that these engagements amplify tools for critically analyzing and producing media, and also increase demand for the production and consumption of news stories that make complex issues relevant and inspire action.
Why is media literacy important to your organization?
The theory of change for the K-12 education team at the Pulitzer Center is that by connecting students and teachers with underreported global news stories and the journalists who cover them, students will strengthen the critical thinking, media literacy, communication, and connection skills they need to inform themselves about the global issues impacting the world around them, cultivate empathy for themselves and others, and take action about the issues that are most important to them. We believe that strengthening media literacy is essential for providing the skills and understanding needed to differentiate news from misinformation and disinformation, and to ensure that people are demanding and receiving accurate information that they can use to address complex issues. We also believe that an important step in cultivating access to accurate and engaging information is increasing understanding of how media is produced and how to evaluate sources.
Anything else you want our readers to know about your organization, your mission, or your staff?
Since our founding, educators and students have been truly essential partners in our mission. Their ideas and contributions have anchored the development of all of our programs and resources, and continue to show us new and powerful ways to amplify global issues and explore solutions. We hope you will consider joining our community by subscribing to our weekly newsletter for educators.
The views and opinions expressed in the Organizational Spotlight blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NAMLE or its members. The purpose of the Organizational Spotlight blog is to highlight our Organizational Partners and give them a place to share their reflections, opinions, and ideas.