Pablo Torres & Team Wins A Pulitzer Prize For Podcast Investigative Reporting
Over 2,400 entries are submitted annually, which are reviewed by 102 judges in 20 juries. Winners are chosen by the Pulitzer Prize Board and typically announced every spring. The awards were established in Joseph Pulitzer’s will and funded by a $2 million endowment to Columbia University.
Pulitizer Prize The team of the Pablo Torre Finds Out (PTFO) podcast, which is produced by Meadowlark Media, was awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting earlier this week. The award was given for investigating how the Los Angeles Clippers pro basketball team allegedly evaded NBA salary cap rules by funneling money to Kawhi Leonard, one of the team’s star players. The four-part investigation uncovered a $28 million deal with a third-party company.
Torres and his staff won for his Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting, specifically for investigative, "live podcast journalism" regarding L. A. Clippers-Aspiration financial links.
The report investigated potential $28 million in "no-show" marketing deals via startup Aspiration, tied to Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, in potential violating NBA rules. Other finalists in that category included The New York Times for The Protocol and The Wall Street Journal for Camp Swamp Road . The official Pulitzer Prize announcement read: “For a pioneering and entertaining form of live podcast journalism that investigated how the Los Angeles Clippers seemingly evaded the NBA’s salary cap rules by funneling money to a star player through an environmental startup.
” The podcast won the award for four episodes in September that probed the financial relationship between Clippers All-Star Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration, a now-defunct third-party company that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer had invested in. The PTFO report even sparked an NBA investigation into the Clippers, which is still ongoing eight months later. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has described the probe as “enormously complex” during his remarks to media at the February All-Star break, which was hosted by the Clippers.
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