The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year for its reporting on a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation.
The newspaper’s staff didn’t know what to do with the $15,000 that came with the prize and “felt the horrendous events of that day made it difficult to fully savor one of the country’s highest honors for journalistic achievement,” said a story published Thursday by the paper.
The publisher, John Robinson Block, suggested the staff donate its winnings to the synagogue so it could repair the bullet-ridden building.
Last week, Keith Burris, the executive editor, presented a check in that amount to rabbi Jeffrey Myers and congregation president Samuel Schachner.
“We feel bound to you and your congregations — by memory and duty,” Burris said. “And we offer you, in humility, our service — as scribes and witnesses. We wish Tree of Life to have this gift … as a sign of this bond and this service. We give it as a modest contribution toward the repair and rebuilding of the congregation’s physical plant.”
The Post-Gazette will also sponsor an annual gathering called the Dina Wallach Block Symposium to honor the shooting victims and provide a forum for residents to discuss “how free speech and free thought can be used to confront hate speech and violence and overcome both with decency and love.”
The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty for Robert Bowers, the 46-year-old man accused of killing 11 people in the shooting last October.
