Pulitzer Center Update

This Week in Review: Growing Up in Murder City

Image by Dominic Bracco II. Mexico, 2011.

Violent crime is spiraling out of control in Central America as drug cartels expand their business to service the voracious appetite of the American market. Honduras’s claim to the highest per-capita murder rate in the world—more than 82 killed per 100,000 in population—is challenged by the Mexican border city of Juarez, which in the last two years has witnessed a body count higher than the decade-long conflict in Afghanistan. Pulitzer Center grantee Dominic Bracco II has spent two years documenting the plight of Juarez’s most vulnerable group—the uneducated and unemployed young people known as Los Ninis. This week we feature Dom’s compelling and disturbing images. Meanwhile, hundreds of high school students from the US and Mexico had an opportunity to hear Dom talk about his project at the WorldLink 15th Annual Youth Town Meeting associated with the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice in San Diego. This is an example of how we constantly strive to expand the conventions of journalism to include the broadest possible audience though our education partnerships and outreach programs.

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For most of the media, Turkey’s “Kurdish Problem” is identified with the wind-scrubbed plains and rugged mountains of the country’s rural southeast. In reality, the largest Kurdish city in Turkey is Istanbul, a modern business capital with a toehold in Europe. For Untold Stories, Pulitzer Center grantee Jenna Krajeski, who has reported from the southeast regions, but lives in Istanbul, takes a look at one of the city’s neighborhoods where Kurds and their traditions are under threat—not from the security forces or harsh government decrees, but from urban gentrification and the city’s growing prosperity.

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Last year was an eventful one for the Pulitzer Center. We launched 58 new projects and provided $911,000 in reporting grants. The work of our grantees appeared in more than 100 outlets, ranging from The New York Times, The Washington Post and Foreign Policy to NPR’s Morning Edition and the PBS NewsHour. A detailed breakdown of this year of accomplishment can be found in our Annual Report 2011.

Until next week,

Tom Hundley
Senior Editor