TMU alumna Tamsin McMahon wins Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Coverage

Journalism grad Tamsin McMahon got her start in local news, and now local news has taken her to international heights.  At the age of 10, McMahon was a child movie reviewer for her weekly Oakville newspaper, and in 2024, her passion for local journalism earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the first time a TMU grad has won the prestigious award.

McMahon, managing editor of Lookout Santa Cruz, a California digital news outlet, and her team won the 2024 Pulitzer for Breaking News Reporting (external link) . They were awarded the prize for their detailed and nimble community-focused coverage of catastrophic flooding and mudslides that displaced thousands of residents and damaged and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses in Santa Cruz County in early 2023.

The Pulitzer Prizes Committee live-streamed its announcement of the winners on May 6, 2024: “We all gathered in our conference room with our mismatched mugs for the champagne,” McMahon recalls, with a chuckle. “Until they officially announced it, I think a lot of people thought maybe this was a mistake. We have a newsroom of only 10 and we’re pretty young – not even two-and-a-half years old when the storms hit.”

And hit they did. When the first of nine atmospheric rivers – flowing columns of condensed water vapour in the atmosphere – struck Santa Cruz County on New Year’s Eve in 2022, it took McMahon and her team by surprise.

Weather watch

“We’d written a little story saying ‘there will be a lot of rain’ and that was it,” recalls McMahon, who had only joined Lookout two months earlier. “I had a bunch of holiday features lined up, and then I started to get these emergency alerts on my phone and press releases and evacuation warnings from the Sheriff’s Office.” McMahon quickly realized this wasn’t a typical rainstorm, but most of her team was away for the holidays.

McMahon and photojournalist Kevin Painchaud put together the first stories on their own, reporting on flooding, power outages and evacuation warnings in neighbourhoods along the coast.

 “There were huge winds and big ocean swells. A lot of the damage was caused by the ocean rising up and throwing huge boulders onto the road and smashing in homes and businesses,” she recalls. “It was intense and unrelenting – you’d think it was done and then you’d get another weather forecast telling you there’s more coming.”

Lifeline for the community

Calling the rest of the newsroom back in after the weekend, McMahon and her team took down the Lookout’s paywall and delivered 83 staff-written stories, 30 email and text alerts, 86 live blog updates and 157 Twitter, Instagram and Facebook posts to cover the breaking news as it happened. Working 12- to 15-hour days for weeks on end, the small team filled a news gap left when the local AM radio station closed down and the local TV station consolidated its operations in another county.

“We weren’t used to doing constant updates on road closures, evacuation shelters, places to get sandbags and things like that, but we kind of filled that in,” explains McMahon.

Their coverage had a significant impact on the community. Text message alerts – which were originally intended for food and arts writers to send recommendations to readers – ended up being a lifeline for residents when power and landlines went down. 

One resident told the Lookout team that, during the storms, she refreshed their blog for a feeling of comfort, knowing  she could go there and see what was happening. Another said she waited for the Lookout’s message that their local road was open before trusting that it was safe to head home. “It was really gratifying to hear from people that they really relied on our coverage,” says McMahon.

The impact was felt even wider when a Santa Cruz county supervisor sent the Lookout’s coverage to the White House to help paint a picture of what was happening. The reports helped convince President Biden to visit Santa Cruz County, the first sitting president to do so in almost 40 years. During his tour of the storm damage, Biden pledged full federal support  (external link) for disaster recovery.

TMU training

McMahon, who previously worked at The Globe and Mail for seven years, believes her journalism training at TMU gave her the full spectrum of journalistic skills she uses to this day – skills that helped McMahon and her team win a Pulitzer. 

“It’s an excellent journalism program with a strong link to the business, and I credit it for making me a really well-rounded journalist and helping me get into the industry,” she says. “It teaches you the fundamentals and how to be really accurate, so the idea of working quickly but also making sure you’re getting things right, and you’re being responsible in your coverage.”

Importance of local news

McMahon is not only thrilled for her team’s Pulitzer, but also that a couple of other smaller digital outlets were recognized this year. “It’s been able to create a conversation around the idea that there are alternatives for local journalism,” she says. 

These alternatives include a reemergence of local news by some digital outlets that are finding different business models and different ways of being funded. “The idea that they can cover a local community and do it in a way that a lot of people can access, I think that's been really great,” says McMahon. “It's been gratifying to see just how much it means for the community to do this kind of public service type journalism, as well.”

It’s no surprise that McMahon encourages other journalists, and journalism students, to appreciate the opportunities available at the local level. 

“When I was in school, I had this idea that you had to go to The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the CBC, or some other big place. But actually, community journalism is a great way to report deeply on a community, and you can do really impactful work,” she says. 

“And it’s an opportunity professionally – I'm not sure a lot of the staff who came to the Lookout thought they were coming to win a Pulitzer Prize, but they did!”