The Los Angeles Times won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday for coverage of two of the most troubling problems facing Southern California — homelessness and racial division.
The newspaper’s staff won the Pulitzer for breaking news for a series of stories on a secret audio recording that exposed Los Angeles City Council members scheming in a crass and racist bull session about political power in the city.
Christina House won the feature photography award for her deeply empathetic images of a young woman living alongside the Hollywood Freeway while coping with drug issues and the birth of a child.
The Times has now won seven breaking news Pulitzers, more than any other news organization. This also marked the fifth year in a row that the outlet won at least one Pulitzer, considered the top honor in journalism.
The newspaper’s staff was a finalist in the local reporting category for its series of stories on the wave of illegal cultivation, corruption and worker exploitation that followed the legalization of marijuana in California.
“These prizes reflect careful, sophisticated, nuanced reporting and photography on complex topics important to Angelenos: power, representation, race relations, homelessness,” Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida said. “The awards are a testament to the consistent high quality of L.A. Times journalism. I am very proud of the winners and of the entire staff.”
A story that would come to dominate L.A. and its leaders for months began on a Saturday afternoon in early October, when reporter Julia Wick received a tip from a source: Members of the L.A. City Council and a labor leader had been recorded as they held a raw and ugly private chat about how they could hold on to power in the city.
The recording had been posted weeks earlier on Reddit and then taken down but received little attention before The Times obtained a copy of the audio and began the intense and painstaking work of verifying and analyzing the contents, a task headed by Wick, David Zahniser, Dakota Smith and Ben Oreskes.
Just after 9 a.m. that Sunday, The Times posted a story detailing how Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez made cruel and racist remarks as she and fellow city lawmakers Kevin de Leon and Gilbert Cedillo discussed how they and other Latino politicians would solidify their positions.
Martinez focused particular animus on then-Councilman Mike Bonin, who is white, and Bonin’s young son, who is Black. At one point, Martinez called Bonin a “little bitch” and referred to his son as a “changuito,” or “like a monkey.” She also said Bonin’s son had misbehaved on a parade float and needed a “beatdown.”
The revelation triggered a wave of indignation and calls for Martinez and the other council members to resign. In less than a week, the powerful council president had been forced to resign. Cedillo left the council at the end of his term, while demands for De Leon’s resignation continue to this day.
Over the weeks that followed, much of The Times’ staff would become engaged in parsing the recording and its contexts – ranging over issues from redistricting to obscure political rivalries and the more sweeping racial divisions that beset Los Angeles.
As the journalists, led by Assistant Managing Editor Steve Clow, came to understand the story, The Times and its attorney had to stave off the threat of legal action by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the powerful union organization whose lawyers claimed that the the recording was “illegal” and said the newspaper would subject itself to “potential liability.”
Among the multiple follow-ups to the story was a deeply reported and annotated transcript of the entire conversation, with Times beat reporters and columnists including Gustavo Arellano, Erika D. Smith and Michael Hiltzik helping shed light on the context and hidden intrigues within the private conversation.
House’s work grew out of her collaboration with video journalist Claire Hannah Collins and homelessness reporter Gale Holland. Collins had the initial idea to focus intently on the travails of unhoused women who live with pregnancies, and sometimes births, while living on the street.
The trio found 22-year-old Mckenzie Trahan, pregnant and living in a tent, above the roar of the freeway. They came to deeply know not only Trahan but the two women – her mother and case manager – whose lives were also blighted by homelessness.
House captured the most intimate moments of the young woman’s life, including as she gave birth to her daughter and later as she shared a bath with her baby.
The editors who nominated House for the prize praised the special bond she forged with her subject, an intimacy on display in the photos of Trahan. The stories appeared in a special section of The Times last July, headlined “Hollywood’s Finest.”
A documentary Collins made as part of the project premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and was named a finalist for feature in January 2023.
