A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest early this year after editors killed her sketch criticizing the Post owner and other media chief executives working to curry favor with Trump has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary.
Ann Telnaes won for "delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity - and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years," according to the Pulitzer announcement on Monday.
Her cartoon showed a group of media executives bowing before then President-elect Donald Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Several executives, Bezos among them, had been spotted around that time at Trump's Florida club Mar-a-Lago. Telnaes accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations. Amazon also donated 1 million to Trump's inauguration fund.
When she quit the newspaper earlier this year, Telnaes that she'd never before had a sketch killed because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon's commentary. She called that a game-changer and dangerous for a free press.