WKU News

A WKU senior who will graduate Friday and a 2012 alumnus were part of the team at the Chicago Tribune honored Monday with the Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting for the Tribune’s coverage of “Operation Midway Blitz,” a federal immigration sweep in the Chicago area.

Dominic Di Palermo, a photojournalism major from St. Charles, Illinois, was an intern at the Tribune during the Fall 2025 semester and was part of the team covering the controversial immigration raids and the protests surrounding them. Di Palermo captured images that were part of the Tribune’s signature entry, “64 days in Chicago: The story of Operation Midway Blitz.”

Armando Sanchez, a 2012 WKU photojournalism graduate, was also on the team honored for their work.

Sanchez and Di Palermo are the 39^th and 40^th alumni of WKU Student Publications to be honored with the Pulitzer Prize, either individually or as part of a team. Di Palermo served as photo editor of the College Heights Herald and also was on the Talisman magazine staff. Sanchez worked on both the Herald and the Talisman, then a yearbook, as a student on the Hill.

Di Palermo is the first of those WKU Pulitzer winners to be honored while still a student.

“It doesn’t feel real, to the point that I’m looking at the Pulitzer website, it doesn’t make sense,” Di Palermo told the Herald. “I hadn’t covered something big, intense before, and so I think the first time I really covered a protest that started to get more tense was at Western Kentucky.”

Sanchez said he was proud to share in the prize with another WKU alumnus. “It’s really cool to see that legacy, too, of Western still putting out good photojournalists,” Sanchez told the Herald.

The Tribune’s work that earned the Pulitzer can be found here: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/staff-chicago-tribune

The College Heights Herald story can be found here: https://wkuherald.com/93535/news/wku-student-and-alumni-bring-home-pulitzer-prize/