trAPPed (subtitled “Arrested by phone – a true story”), a webtoon published by Bloomberg, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. The webtoon by Anand RK and reported by Suparna Sharma and Natalie Obiko Pearson tells the story of a neurologist kept in her home for eight days by a digital scam that has affected hundreds of thousands in India. No plans for print release have been reported to date.
The Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category was added to the Pulitzer Prizes with the 2022 awards, replacing the Editorial Cartooning category, which had been in place for over 100 years, since 1921.
The 2022 winner in the category, I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp, the story by Anthony Del Col with art by Fahmida Azim of a Uighur woman imprisoned in China, originally published by Business Insider, was released in print by Lev Gleason in 2024. Other winners in the category since it was broadened beyond editorial cartoonists have included what looks like another webtoon, by a prisoner in Rikers for The New Yorker, an editorial cartoonist, and illustrated reporting.
Expanding the award to include online comics (at least some of which make it to print) is a positive step by the venerable organization that administers the awards, and gives visibility to the format and to the importance of non-fiction graphic storytelling.
Source: ICv2
