Lookout Santa Cruz wins Pulitzer Prize

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - A small community news organization called Lookout Santa Cruz won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize on Monday in the breaking news category for its coverage of the catastrophic January 2023 floods in Santa Cruz County.

Staff photographer Natasha Loudermilk took a jubilant photo and shared it on social media. Reporters cheered and raised their fists in the air.

The coveted prize noted the site's "detailed and nimble community-focused coverage, over a holiday weekend, of catastrophic flooding and mudslides that displaced thousands of California residents and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses."

That statement was attributed to Marjorie Miller, vice president and global enterprise editor at The Associated Press.

Lookout staff wrote on its website: "We awed to win the category won in the past three years by the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald and the Minneapolis Star Tribune."

The message continued: "Everyone in our company contributed to that coverage and our many (digital) ways to distribute it to readers throughout the county, even those without internet service. It was a true team effort that required us to often work 12-hour days and through weekends. But our newsroom matched the often-heroic work of local responders, doing the job we were built to do."

The other finalists were the Honolulu Civil Beat for its coverage of Maui wildfires and the Los Angeles Times for coverage of a fatal Lunar New Year shooting.