City Bureau, Invisible Institute Win Pulitzer For Coverage Of Missing Black Women In Chicago

Sarah Conway and Trina Reynolds-Tyler won the prestigious award in the Local Reporting category. Invisible Institute also won for Audio Reporting.

By Jamie Nesbitt Golden

On May 6, 2024

CHICAGO — Two Chicago journalists have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their series on Chicago’s missing and murdered Black women.

City Bureau Senior Reporter Sarah Conway and Invisible Institute Data Director Trina Reynolds-Tyler were named winners in the Local Reporting category Monday afternoon.

The two spent years collecting data on missing persons cases, examining the failures of law enforcement and talking with families desperate for help, culminating in a seven-part series, “Missing in Chicago.”

The project was a collaboration between City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two Chicago-based journalism nonprofits. Invisible Institute won a second Pulitzer Monday in the Audio Reporting category for “You Didn’t See Nothin’,” a collaboration with USG Audio about Chicago hate crime. Also Monday, Chicago-based author Jonathan Eig won a Pulitzer in the Biography category for his best-seller Martin Luther King Jr. biography “King: A Life.”

City Bureau and the Invisible Institute’s award-winning reporting on missing and murdered Black woman has already made an impact, with the city exploring the possibility of creating a task force to address the issue. Mayor Brandon Johnson filed a resolution last month in conjunction with Ald. Stephanie Coleman (16th), who announced in January she would be looking to build on a task force created by former mayor Lori Lightfoot, which focused on addressing sex trafficking and intimate partner violence. 

When Conway told her daughters about her Pulitzer win, which comes with a gold medal resembling a coin, they got excited.

“I was like, ‘Whoa!’ And [my kids] were like, ‘Can I have the coin?’ ” Conway told Block Club. “That was what they got very excited about because they were like, ‘What kind of coin is it?’”

Reynolds-Tyler was thrilled to hear the news, she said Monday afternoon.

“As a little Black girl from the South Side of Chicago this is … I just feel very honored. I’m so grateful for the opportunity for us to model investigative data journalism, really excited that we are able to do this in the third largest metropolitan city in the country. The level of intention and care that can come to journalism can be healing, it can be heavy, it can set a record. And this work embodies truth, the truth of law enforcement. It’s the truth of families. It’s the truth of advocates,” said Reynolds-Tyler, a trained restorative justice practitioner.

The University of Chicago alumna said she hopes their reporting leads to a larger effort to address the systematic causes that lead to disappearance of Black women and girls across the city. The two also hope their work will inspire fellow journalists to interrogate their own biases.

“Often journalists come looking for specific angle and they nitpick the stories of people and there are so many survivors, families of the missing who we had rebuild relationships with after their trust had been broken by the media,” Reynolds-Tyler said. “It is the responsibility of journalists to not just think about the worst thing that happened to someone as like the starting point of an incident but more so an opportunity to paint a full picture so that we can see the ways that you know, folk stories are so deeply connecting. How so many people have shared lived experiences, even though they have never met before. And by way of illuminating these things, we can talk start talking about real solutions.”

For Conway, who has covered everything from criminal justice to economic development for City Bureau, winning the Pulitzer is an affirmation that the stories of the families affected matter and that they haven’t been fighting in vain.

“This just further illuminates the need for people to really investigate and look into these systems more and realize the impact that it has on everyday people in Chicago. And the impact that it has on Black women and girls who are disproportionately impacted by this crisis,” Conway said.

City Bureau Executive Director Morgan Malone said the win “serves as proof that investigative reporting with engagement and community in mind are a necessity, versus a ‘nice to have.’”

“Sarah and Trina deserve this recognition for many reasons. The rigor, care and thoughtfulness that they put into this investigation shine through within each piece, and I couldn’t be more proud of their commitment. When our reporting is informed by the lived experiences and needs of community, the potential for impact is boundless. I look forward to the change brewing in Chicago and Illinois, due in large part to their incredible reporting, and in the journalism industry at large, as this Pulitzer is proof that investigative journalism driven by community is alive, well and a catalyst for the world we know to be possible.”

This piece was republished from Block Club Chicago.