Congratulations to Ann Telnaes, who won the winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary (née Editorial Cartoons). The prize was awarded to Telnaes for “delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years.”
Telnaes, who also won a Pulitzer in 2001, was a Pulitzer finalist in 2022, and was awarded the Herblock Prize in 2023, was a staple on the editorial pages of The Washington Post from 2008 to 2025. She courageously left the Post in 2025 after a cartoon criticizing Post owner Jeff Bezos kowtowing to President Trump was spiked due to the paper’s new editorial guidelines. Telnaes’ departure became a lightning rod for press freedom, and sparked an exodus of other Post columnists.
Telnaes’ work spans cartoons, animation, and visual essays. Her innovative and fearless cartoons can now be seen on her Substack, Open Windows.
And congratulations are due the Pulitzer finalists. Steve Breen, along with a team of journalists at inewsource.org in San Diego, was a finalists for his work on Fentanyl: A Decade of Death, a comics journalism “which deftly weaves hard data and human stories with effective metaphors to create a powerful visual narrative for a national audience and the local San Diego readership.” Jess Ruliffson and Ernesto Barbieri were the other Pulitzer finalists for their comics journalism series, True Stories from an ICU for The Boston Globe.
