Reuters News journalist Andrea Januta (ΦBK, Yale University), together with team members Andrew Chung, Lawrence Hurley, Jaimi Dowdell, and Jackie Botts, earned a 2021 Pulitzer Prize in the category or Explanatory Reporting for the series “Shielded,” an exhaustive examination, powered by a pioneering data analysis of U.S. federal court cases, of the obscure legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” and how it shields police who use excessive force from prosecution.
“In a year of tumultuous protest over police killings of Black Americans, ‘Shielded’ was a work of tremendous moral force about the intractable problem facing the world’s most powerful democracy, the legacy of racial injustice,” said Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni. “The series, unprecedented in its breadth, depth, and analytical rigor, examined the little-known legal doctrine known as qualified immunity—a major reason why most victims of police violence are unable to win redress in American courts. The series had a major impact, catapulting qualified immunity into the center of the debate over how to reform American policing.”
Januta’s reporting for Reuters focuses on investigations and data. Before earning her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, she was a financial data analyst at Goldman Sachs. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s in math and economics from Yale University.