OU Student Media Hall of Fame member Hannah Allam was part of The Washington Post team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in May for 15 pieces published throughout 2023 comprehensively exploring gun violence.
The entry was led by a groundbreaking project that examined how bullets fired from AR-15s tear bodies apart.
The Pulitzer board, in its citation, said it selected The Post for “its sobering examination of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, which forced readers to reckon with the horrors wrought by the weapon often used for mass shootings in America.” The board moved it to the national category from the public service category, where it was originally entered and nominated.
Per The Post, the series “carefully presented elements including never-before-published crime-scene photos and body-cam footage; interviews with industry insiders and shooting survivors; and findings from autopsy reports and investigative files to illustrate this weapon’s devastating capacity to kill and its impact on communities across the country.”
Allam, a 1999 graduate who writes about extremism, domestic terrorism and national security, previously covered national security at NPR and was a longtime foreign correspondent for McClatchy, serving as bureau chief in Baghdad during the Iraq War and in Cairo during the Arab Spring rebellions. Since returning to the United States in 2012, she has focused her work on U.S. foreign policy, race and religion, and the mainstreaming of extremist ideologies.
It marks Allam’s second Pulitzer, following her role in the Post’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
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