Pulitzer-winner Anna Wolfe on how to ‘honor people through storytelling’

Update: The lineup for this week’s “Stories that Matter” panel has changed. The panel will include Pulitzer Prize-winners Caitlin Dickerson of The Atlantic, Anna Wolfe of Mississippi Today and Nicole Carroll, former editor in chief of USA TODAY and executive director of NEWSWELL.

Several years into her work as a watchdog reporter in Mississippi, Anna Wolfe decided she wanted to create a new beat. 

She had been writing for the local newspaper, stories about city hall and health care, medical billing and hunger. 

“I totally found my people, and I found my purpose in telling stories in a place where the storytelling is so rich,” Wolfe said. 

But she saw a common element. Her new beat, she thought, should focus on poverty. She pitched the idea to Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news source, and in 2018, was hired for a new assignment. 

“I was honestly pretty curious, if not skeptical, of how she’d start the beat from scratch,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “We all know poverty is such an underlying factor of really every major problem facing Mississippi, but with such nebulous public policy surrounding it and really a broad misunderstanding about what causes it, how do you connect all those dots for readers?” 

Soon, the dots began connecting. 

Wolfe began covering inequity in government programs, nonprofit service providers and institutions affecting the marginalized. 

Over five years, she uncovered the details of a $77 million welfare scandal from the administration of former Gov. Phil Bryant, revealing how the money was steered away from needy families and into the hands of others. Her series, “The Backchannel,” won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 2023 — the culmination of years of reporting. 

The impact of local investigative reporting will be one focus of a public forum Feb. 13 at San Joaquin Delta College. The event brings Wolfe together with other journalists honored by the Pulitzer Prizes, for a conversation about news, politics and the future of journalism in the community. 

Among the many remarkable things about Wolfe’s dedication to local reporting: She isn’t from Mississippi. 

Wolfe grew up in Washington state and began her journalism journey at a community college there. 

She loved to write when she was younger. “I just chose the path that allowed me to do that,” she said. “It was my favorite part of my education and definitely set me up in so many ways for what I’m doing now.” 

Eventually she made her way to Mississippi State University. When she graduated in 2014, she decided not to return to the West Coast, but to stay and work in the South. 

In 2015, Wolfe began reporting for The Clarion Ledger, a newsroom in Jackson, Mississippi. Three years later, she pitched the poverty beat to her new newsroom, where Ganucheau, the editor, watched it grow. 

“I got to see firsthand how she was building the beat: tough but fair pressure of welfare agency leaders who were making life-altering decisions, plus boots-on-the-ground storytelling,” Ganucheau said.

Wolfe’s Pulitzer-winning project continues to roil the state, with Bryant filing a lawsuit against the newsroom that has led to an ongoing court fight over reporters’ rights. 

But the impact didn’t stop with “The Backchannel.” 

One of Wolfe’s most recent reports documented the cases of women who were addicted to drugs while pregnant and later facing felony charges for assault on their fetuses. It was, Wolfe wrote, “a hazy legal theory that has yet to be challenged in Mississippi.” Yet mothers now faced decades of jail time. 

In the case of one mother who had overcome her drug addiction and kept her child, Wolfe found, the woman was facing 20 years of jail time five years after delivering her baby. After Wolfe’s reporting, a local district attorney decided to drop the case and later said he would stop prosecuting others.  

Wolfe says the impact came from “reporting and interviewing the D.A. that was prosecuting these women, and having really deep and genuine conversations with this person, just trying to understand where he’s coming from.”

“He came to the conclusion what he was doing was not really working and chose not to bring these cases forward anymore to a grand jury,” Wolfe said. “There is no award or prize that could really compare to the satisfaction that kind of impact brings to me.”

“She’s the most empathetic person I know, and one of the strongest,” Ganucheau said. “You wouldn’t believe the things she’s seen and heard while she’s reporting these stories, so many of which are literally life-or-death for people.”

For Wolfe, spreading the word about journalism and the importance of telling the truth has grown even more important in today’s climate — which is what makes events like next week’s open forum at the Pulitzer on the Road event so valuable.

Andrea Rivera is a student journalist at San Joaquin Delta College and Sacramento State.

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