Anne Applebaum, author and staff writer for The Atlantic, and Gabriel Escobar, the editor and senior vice president of The Philadelphia Inquirer, have been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University announced today.
"We are delighted to welcome these two acclaimed journalists to the Pulitzer Prize Board," said co-chairs Katherine Boo, author and journalist; Gail Collins, opinion columnist for The New York Times; and John Daniszewski, vice president for standards for The Associated Press. “In her work for The Atlantic and previously for The Washington Post, Applebaum has powerfully documented the spread of repressive authoritarianism as an ongoing threat to human rights and liberties. Escobar, leading the newsroom of a distinguished metropolitan newspaper at a time when quality local journalism is urgently needed, will bring to the board his expertise for inclusive storytelling and investigations that hold public institutions accountable."
A prize-winning historian with a particular expertise in the history of communist and post-communist Europe, Applebaum is the author of several books, including "Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine" (2017); "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe" (2012); and "Gulag: A History" (2003), which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Both "Gulag" and "Iron Curtain" were finalists for the National Book Award. A columnist for The Washington Post for 15 years, she is a former member of The Washington Post editorial board, a former deputy editor of the Spectator magazine in London, and a former Warsaw correspondent of The Economist magazine and the Independent newspaper. She also has written for the New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs and currently holds the position of senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-leads ARENA, a research project on disinformation and 21st century propaganda.
"It's a great honor to be part of an institution with such a long history of dedication to journalism. The recognition and reward of excellence is an important task, especially in this era of informational revolution," Applebaum said.
Applebaum is a graduate of Yale University and received an M.Sc. in international relations from the London School of Economics. She also was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University and holds honorary doctorates from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Kyiv Mohyla University.
Escobar is the editor and senior vice president of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was founded in 1829 and is one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the Western Hemisphere. The Philadelphia Inquirer LLC has multiple brand platforms, including Inquirer.com, newspapers, e-editions, apps, newsletters and live events, that reach more than 10 million people a month.
He spent 16 years at The Washington Post, as a reporter on the local and national staffs, a foreign correspondent based in South America and as city editor. At the Inquirer he has worked as managing editor, deputy managing editor for Metro and as assistant managing editor for news. Escobar also worked at The Hartford Courant, the Philadelphia Daily News and The Dallas Morning News, where he was an editorial writer and columnist.
"For over a century The Pulitzer Prizes have defined the gold standard in journalism and the arts through the annual awards. Joining the board and taking part in this illustrious process is both an honor and a privilege," said Escobar.
Born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in New York City, Escobar has a B.A. in creative writing from Queens College, CUNY, and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.
The Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered at Columbia University, were established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912 and establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917.
