Baltimore Reporters Win Journalism's Highest Honor For Coverage Of Fentanyl Crisis

BALTIMORE, MD — Three Maryland journalists won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting on Monday.

Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times took home the honor for their coverage of overdoses in Baltimore.

This is The Banner's first Pulitzer Prize, considered journalism's highest honor, since the nonprofit news outlet launched three years ago.

The Pulitzer board applauded the reporters' "compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore's fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men." It noted that the Banner had created a "sophisticated statistical model" that it shared with nine other newsrooms across the country so they could pursue their own versions of the investigation.

The two-year project started as part of a fellowship that Zhu completed with The Times from 2023 to 2024 that provided resources and coaching for local investigations that require significant time and effort.

"A deep dive on drug overdoses was one of The Banner's first big story ideas, when our editor Kimi Yoshino recognized that a crisis that was killing thousands in the city had been largely overlooked. We began to dig. We sued to obtain data that had been kept from the public's view and scoured the city for stories from mothers who have buried children, people struggling with addiction and frontline workers fighting to save lives every day," Zhu said in a press release, according to Poynter. "As a result, our team is honored to accept the organization's first Pulitzer Prize. We are even more honored to see the information we brought to light is now helping shape new conversations, policies and programs to tackle overdoses in our city and state."