Student Publications News

A WKU senior who will graduate Friday and two alumni were honored with Pulitzer Prizes this week as members of teams winning the highest awards in American journalism.

Dominic Di Palermo, a photojournalism major and an intern at the Chicago Tribune during the Fall 2025 semester, was part of the Tribune team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting for the Tribune’s coverage of “Operation Midway Blitz,” a federal immigration sweep in the Chicago area.

Also on the Tribune Pulitzer team was 2012 WKU photojournalism graduate Armando Sanchez.

Jabin Botsford, a 2019 WKU photojournalism graduate, was part of The Washington Post team given the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service for the Post’s coverage throughout 2025 of how the Trump administration was reshaping the federal government.

Sanchez and Di Palermo are the 40^th and 41^st journalists who worked at 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.

For Botsford, the 2026 Gold Medal is his fourth Pulitzer Prize. He also was on teams that won the 2025 Pulitzer for breaking news for coverage of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump; the team that won the 2024 Pulitzer for national reporting for coverage of the rise in popularity of semi-automatic rifles; and the team that won the 2022 Gold Medal for coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.

The Chicago Tribune’s work that earned the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting can be found here: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/staff-chicago-tribune

The Washington Post’s work that earned the 2026 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service can be found here: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-4

The College Heights Herald stories can be found here:

https://wkuherald.com/93535/news/wku-student-and-alumni-bring-home-pulitzer-prize/

https://wkuherald.com/93555/news/third-wku-alum-wins-pulitzer-prize-this-year/