Luke Broadwater ’02 was surprised when he found out that the story he broke for the Baltimore Sun had earned the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize. His reporting led to a series of stories written last year in the Baltimore Sun exposing Baltimore’s mayor, Catherine Pugh, as receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in deals for her “Healthy Holly” books, including a deal with the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), where she served as a board member. Pugh sponsored dozens of bills affecting hospitals in Maryland, including several that would have benefited UMMS.
“To see everything that happened and everything that transpired based on these stories, and then to be recognized by the Pulitzer committee as doing some of the best journalism in the country, was very rewarding.”
Announced on May 4, the staff of the Baltimore Sun was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting for “illuminating, impactful reporting on a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.”
Broadwater first broke the story in March of 2019. He said he got a tip from someone who was having a hard time getting records about contracts from the hospital system, so he started investigating. “When I contacted the medical system they refused to give me any of their records and it felt like something was off and it tickled my ‘Spidey sense,’” said Broadwater. “Then I saw the mayor was sitting on the board and she was making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of children’s books, and I thought there’s no way these books are as big as Harry Potter.”
The story quickly unraveled as Pugh was found to have additional deals with companies purchasing her self-published books. “Every time we thought we found someone she had a deal with, we’d find another one,” said Broadwater. “I was surprised at the quickness of the impact. You didn’t have to sit around to see your story make a difference, it immediately started making a difference.”