Explanatory journalism or explanatory reporting is a form of reporting that attempts to present ongoing news stories in a more accessible manner by providing greater context than would be presented in traditional news sources. [1] [2] [3] The term is often associated with the explanatory news website Vox , [1] [4] [5] but explanatory reporting (previously explanatory journalism) has also been a Pulitzer Prize category since 1985. [6] [7] Other examples include The Upshot by The New York Times , Bloomberg Quicktake, The Conversation, and FiveThirtyEight . [8]
Journalism professor Michael Schudson says explanatory journalism and analytic journalism are the same, because both attempt to "explain a complicated event or process in a comprehensible narrative" and require "intelligence and a kind of pedagogical flair, linking the capacity to understand a complex situation with a knack for transmitting that understanding to a broad public." [9] Schudson says explanatory journalists "aid democracy."
The Pulitzer Prize is an award administered by Columbia University for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher.
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism schools in the world and the only journalism school in the Ivy League. It offers four graduate degree programs.
The Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting has been presented since 1998, for a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear presentation. From 1985 to 1997, it was known as the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism.
Michael S. Schudson is professor of journalism in the graduate school of journalism of Columbia University and adjunct professor in the department of sociology. He is professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is an expert in the fields such as journalism history, media sociology, political communication, and public culture.
Journalistic objectivity is a considerable notion within the discussion of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity may refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities. First evolving as a practice in the 18th century, a number of critiques and alternatives to the notion have emerged since, fuelling ongoing and dynamic discourse surrounding the ideal of objectivity in journalism.
Richard Read is a freelance reporter based in Seattle, where he was a national reporter and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times from 2019 to 2021. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was a senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Oregonian, working for the Portland, Oregon newspaper from 1981 to 1986 and 1989 until 2016.
Michael Thomas Vitez is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author. He is the son of immigrants, his father having fled from Budapest, Hungary in 1939, and his mother came to America from Europe as a German Jew in 1941; both leaving their homeland to escape from Hitler's reign. He is the Director of Narrative Medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, after serving as a journalist over a three decade career (1985-2015) with The Philadelphia Inquirer.
ProPublica, legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to investigative journalism. ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won six Pulitzer Prizes.
David Louis Finkel is an American journalist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 as a staff writer at The Washington Post. As of January 2017, he was national enterprise editor at the Post. He has also worked for the Post's foreign staff division. He wrote The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.
Connie Walker is a Pulitzer-prize winning Cree journalist.
Walter Robert Mears was an American journalist, author, and educator. Mears worked for the Associated Press (AP) from 1956 until his retirement in 2001. In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of the 1976 United States presidential election. After retirement, he taught journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University.
Charles Duhigg is an American journalist and non-fiction author. He was a reporter for The New York Times, currently writes for The New Yorker Magazine and is the author of three books on habits and productivity, titled The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Smarter Faster Better and Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. In 2013, Duhigg was the recipient, as part of a team of New York Times reporters, of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of ten articles on the business practices of Apple and other technology companies.
Ken Armstrong is a senior investigative reporter at ProPublica.
Analytic journalism is a field of journalism that seeks to make sense of complex reality in order to create public understanding. It combines aspects of investigative journalism and explanatory reporting. Analytic journalism can be seen as a response to professionalized communication from powerful agents, information overload, and growing complexity in a globalised world. It aims to create evidence-based interpretations of reality, often confronting dominant ways of understanding a specific phenomenon.
Vox is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. Vox has been described as left-leaning and progressive.
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project has been described as an advocacy group by some, and works to impact the system through journalism.
Edmund Soon-Weng Yong is a British-American science journalist and author. In 2021, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series on the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the author of two books: I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life (2016) and An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (2022).
Julie Cart, born in Louisiana, is an American journalist. She won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, with her colleague, Bettina Boxall, for their series of stories looking at the cost and effectiveness of combating wildfires in the western United States. She has worked for the Los Angeles Times and several other news organizations. She currently covers environmental issues in the California state capitol as a writer with CalMatters
Bettina Boxall is an American journalist who covered water issues and the environment for the Los Angeles Times. She is a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. She graduated in 1974, with honors, from the University of Maine in Orono. Boxall retired from the Times on May 3, 2022, after 34 years at the paper.
Hannah Dreier is an American journalist. She is a New York Times reporter who specializes in narrative features and investigations. She previously worked at ProPublica, where she was the recipient of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, and The Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. She was Venezuela correspondent for The Associated Press during the first four years of the administration of President Nicolas Maduro.