Exclusive / Old news: Why a former New York Times editor blocked Epstein Pulitzer

A years-old fight among the judges of one of the most coveted prizes in media over a major investigation into Jeffrey Epstein has spilled into view as the story of the late, disgraced financier continues to ripple through American institutions.

Earlier this week, the Pulitzer Board, which presides over the prestigious Columbia University-based awards organization, announced the winners for this year’s top journalism prizes. But among the awards was an unusual announcement: The Board would be awarding a “special citation” for Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie Brown’s 2018 series, Perversion of Justice, that raised questions about the federal government’s prosecution of Epstein, and effectively re-opened the investigation.

The Miami Herald had submitted Brown’s work for a Pulitzer Prize nearly a decade ago when her series was first published. But it did not win an award in 2018 or 2019, a decision that multiple people familiar with the situation said was due to the significant concerns of at least one Pulitzer jurist.

Joseph Sexton, then a ProPublica editor who had previously run the Metro and Sports sections for The New York Times, voiced strong concerns that Brown’s reporting didn’t include enough substantially new information to deserve the award, two people familiar with the deliberations that year told Semafor.

Another person, one of the 2019 judges, David Boardman, alluded to the situation in a post on X, saying a “well-known editor” had staged a “campaign from inside the jury” against Brown receiving the award.

In an email to Semafor, Sexton called Brown’s work “commendable and consequential.” But he said the “most explosive elements of her reporting had been previously published, both in news articles and books.”

“I and others on the jury felt the work was not the best entry for a category that greatly values fully novel reporting,” he said. “The work’s impact on the public’s appreciation of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and the troubling performances by local and federal authorities was considerable, and I raised the possibility that the entry be moved to another category — public service or explanatory, perhaps. Nothing came of it. The Pulitzer board encourages its juries to engage in both robust debate and its own inquiries into the distinctiveness of all entries. It was a seven-person jury, and the majority vote required to advance Brown’s work as a finalist did not happen.”

Brown declined to comment.