Midd Alum Wins Pulitzer for National Reporting

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — David Philipps, a graduate of the Middlebury College class of 2000, has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Philipps, a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette, won the award for his three-day investigative series, “Other than Honorable.” 

According to a press release from the Pulitzer organization at Columbia University, Philipps won the award “for expanding the examination of how wounded combat veterans are mistreated, focusing on loss of benefits for life after discharge by the Army for minor offenses, stories augmented with digital tools and stirring congressional action.”

rder=”0” alt=”other_than_honorable” title=”other_than_honorable” width=”236” height=”256” />

In a Gazette article announcing the award, Philipps noted his complete surprise at winning. “We didn’t do this work for any recognition. With what we were able to achieve without it, we would have been thrilled,” he told reporter Rich Laden. “To have national recognition, with what we were able to do and at a medium-sized newspaper and for this issue, is amazing.”

A Colorado Springs native, Philipps graduated from Middlebury College in 2000 with a major in environmental studies. He went on to earn a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2002. He won the Livingston Award for National Reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting in 2010 for what judges called “his painstaking stories on the spike in violence within a battered combat brigade returning to Fort Carson after bloody deployments to Iraq, leading to increased mental health care for soldiers.”