Fil-Am journo Pablo Torre's podcast bags Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting

Filipino American journalist Pablo Torre's podcast won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting.

The prestigious journalism award-giving body announced the winners on May 4, which included the staff of Pablo Torre Finds Out, a YouTube and Apple podcast Torre founded in September 2023 that tackles big and small issues in sports journalism. 

"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 Prizes said.

The podcast also thanked the award-giving body for bestowing them with the award. 

"We are honored to have been named the winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting!" the show said on its X account.

In 2025, according to The New York Times, Torre reported on his podcast about how the Los Angeles Clippers and their owner, Steve Ballmer, worked around the NBA's salary cap rules to pay basketball star Kawhi Leonard millions of dollars through a four-year, $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration, a California-based environmental company connected to Ballmer.

After the show, the NBA then investigated allegations, to which the Clippers and Ballmer have repeatedly denied. Investigation into the issue remains ongoing.

'Legitimately a celebration'

"[Us] doing a Doc Rivers impression about a salary-themed cap episode is something that I don't think—even the boldest Meadowlark media founder would have ever dream of," Torre said about winning a Pulitzer on the LeBatard YouTube podcast. "I am inarticulate about how much it means to everybody who made these episodes, but for me, this is legitimately a celebration of how as well as what."

"[A] lot of what journalism is about, it turns out, is not merely what you're saying but how you're convincing audiences to care," he concluded. 

Torre also shared that he was proudest to share the news with his mom, a dermatologist from the Philippines.

"My mom—until I think this phone call—was still asking if I was going to go to medical school," he quipped. "Any kid whose parents came to this country with some notion of 'we're gonna risk a lot to send you to good schools and make you study and all that'—that's real."

"My parents getting to see that being silly can also mean being effective and smart and even significant, in its way, was really something that I can't summarize adequately."

Torre learned that he won the Pulitzer after getting a call from the Athletic in the New York Times on 11 a.m. on a Sunday. 

"When you get a call like that [...] you think something bad has happened. [My] reaction was not, 'Oh boy! A random, unannounced call from the New York Times Company!' I thought I was going to have to litigate, or worse. There are lots of things that flashed through my mind. It ended up being one of those core memories that I'm just never going to forget."

The podcast host added that he's curious about what Mark Cuban, who's expressed to be on Ballmer's side, and the NBA think about the prize, as the "Pulitzer jury has deemed this journalism as opposed to gossip."

Pablo Torre Finds Out, produced by Meadowlark Media, is now part of The Athletic Podcast Network under The New York Times Company.

Torre is a Harvard graduate and was formerly a sports writer for Sports Illustrated before moving to ESPN and becoming a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. He also hosted the ESPN Daily podcast, among other sports TV shows.

Also finalists for the Audio Reporting award are Azeen Ghorayshi and Austin Mitchell of The New York Times, and Valerie Bauerlein, Heather Rogers, Colin McNulty, Nathan Singhapok, and Rachel Humphreys of The Wall Street Journal.

According to Pulitzer's website, the award is given "for a distinguished example of audio journalism that serves the public interest, characterized by revelatory reporting and illuminating storytelling" with a cash grant of $15,000 or P905,865.

The Pulitzer Prizes describes itself as "honoring excellence in journalism and the arts since 1917."