Photo credit: Paulette Parker, Michigan Radio

The Pulitzer Prize is generally regarded as being the most prestigious award in the fields of American journalism, books, drama and music. The Pulitzer Prize Board announced May 8 that the Michigan Radio news story, Nine Days in a Michigan Abortion Clinic, as Election Looms was a Finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in the Audio Reporting category.

The Pulitzer Prize names two finalists and a winner in the Audio Reporting category. The winner selected in this category was Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s, a podcast from Gimlet Media that deals with the abuse of hundreds of Indigenous children at an Indian residential school in Canada. Joining Michigan Radio as the other finalist in this category was Broken Doors from the Washington Post, an examination of the human toll of no-knock warrants across the country.

In Nine Days in a Michigan Abortion Clinic, as Election Looms, Michigan Radio reporter Kate Wells covered the complex, confusing, and at times contradictory legal landscape abortion providers and patients had suddenly been thrust into. Her months of prior coverage of this issue created a trust that allowed her to gain unprecedented access to a group of clinics in metro Detroit: Northland Family Planning. This reporting powerfully showed the full range of human experience in this clinic, the emotional complexity, and the impact of the current threats to reproductive rights on real women.

In addition to reporter Kate Wells, other Michigan Radio staff named as contributors to this story were Sarah Hulett, Lindsey Smith, Laura Weber Davis and Paulette Parker.

Nine Days in a Michigan Abortion Clinic, as Election Looms has also been nominated for a 2023 Peabody Award in the Radio & Podcast category.