Quick Facts
Biography
Sarah Ryley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist working as an investigative reporter at The Trace, a non-profit news outlet that covers gun violence in America. Previously, she was an editor and investigative journalist at the New York Daily News, where she reported extensively on the New York Police Department's broken windows policing tactics. Her investigation into "widespread abuse of eviction rules by the police to oust hundreds of people, most of them poor minorities," done in partnership with ProPublica, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Early life and education
Ryley was born in Toledo, Ohio and studied journalism at Wayne State University in Detroit. She served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The South End and held internships at The Oakland Press, Brooklyn Eagle and Detroit News.
Career
Ryley moved to New York City in 2006 and started her career in journalism covering real estate and development at the Brooklyn Eagle. She later became an investigative producer for News Corp's now-defunct national iPad publication The Daily.
She joined the New York Daily News in 2012 as assistant city editor managing courts coverage, and later became the data projects editor and an investigative reporter. Her work exposing racial disparities in the New York Police Department's practice of issuing summonses for low-level offenses resulted in the passage of the Criminal Justice Reform Act. Her investigation into the police department's use of the nuisance abatement law to push people from their businesses and homes, co-published with ProPublica, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2017 and resulted in the passage of the Nuisance Abatement Fairness Act, which made sweeping reforms to the decades-old law to add protections for the accused.
She started work at The Trace in April 2017. She has also been an adjunct professor at The New School.
Awards
- 2017, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2017, James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2017, Investigative Reporters and Editors, finalist, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2017, MOLLY National Journalism Prize, honorable mention, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2017, Deadline Club, Minority Focus Omnibus Award finalist and local reporting finalist, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2016, Online News Association, Knight Award for Public Service, finalist, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2016, May Sidney Award, "The NYPD is running stings against immigrant-owned shops, then pushing for warrantless searches"
- 2016, Newswomen’s Club of New York, "Nuisance Abatement"
- 2015, New York State Associated Press Association, "Fight for their Future"
- 2014, Deadline Club, Minority Focus Omnibus Award, "Broken Windows"
- 2014, Newswomen’s Club of New York, "Beyond Broken"
- 2014, Newswomen’s Club of New York, "The Homicide Project"
- 2014, New York State Associated Press Association, "Broken Windows"
- 2014, New York State Associated Press Association, "Eric Garner"
- 2014, New York State Associated Press Association, "They died at the hands of cops"
- 2013, New York State Associated Press Association, "Stop-and-Frisk"
- 2010, National Association of Real Estate Editors, first prize, commercial real estate, "100 Years of Booms and Busts"