WABE’s criminal justice reporter Lisa Hagen won a Pulitzer Prize in the audio reporting category for “No Compromise,” a podcast focused on gun rights and the Second Amendment.
Hagen, who joined the NPR station in Atlanta in 2015, is the first reporter for the station to ever win a Pulitzer, considered one of the most prestigious journalism awards available. In fact, it’s the first Pulitzer NPR itself has ever received. (This is only the second year that the Pulitzer Prize committee has experimented with an audio category.)
The six-episode podcast released last fall explores how an activist group of brothers in Iowa who fiercely support the Second Amendment uses social media to build networks of groups that are against all regulations on gun ownership — and aren’t willing to compromise.
Hagen was part of a special Guns and America public radio reporting collaborative over two years from 2018 to 2020. She worked on the project with reporters from other NPR stations in the country: Chris Haxel, Graham Smith and Robert Little.
“So many feelings,” Hagen said on Twitter. “Not least of which is that we should all probably think hard about tools of emotional manipulation in politics.”
Hagen told NPR that she was in Alaska when she got the news. “I took a tequila shot with a stuffed bear on the wall,” she said. “I’m taking some time off and fishing. "
Her primary beat for WABE is criminal and social justice. A Hawaii native, she previously did freelance work for the New York Post. She is a graduate of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
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