Former Daily Bruin writer wins Pulitzer as part of award-winning staff

“Yo mama, your little girl just won a Pulitzer.”

That was the text Alexa Vaughn sent her mother after hearing the news from a colleague at The Seattle Times.

Vaughn, a UCLA alumna who wrote for the Daily Bruin from January 2006 to June 2007, won a Pulitzer Prize in April for her involvement in The Seattle Times’ breaking news reporting on a mudslide in Oso, Wash. that killed 43 people in March 2014.

The nature of the story made winning bittersweet, Vaughn said.

“It’s not an award you’re happy to receive because you remember the horrible things that happened to the people you reported on,” Vaughn said in a statement to Antelope Valley College, one of her alma maters.

Still, Vaughn said she felt honored to receive the award because the reporting process was challenging for her. She described having to report from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. some days and having to remind herself to be caring and respectful while asking people to share their stories during a devastating time.

The experience of covering the catastrophic event was bigger and more pride-inducing than winning the award, she said.

Dorene Vaughn’s reaction, however, was ecstatic.

“When I saw the text, I screamed, and one of my sons asked me what had happened. From there, the news spread wide and far,” Dorene Vaughn said.

Vaughn said her daughter has always been passionate about reading and writing.

“As a little girl she wrote interviews, and she’s been listening since she was in the womb,” she said.

Dorene Vaughn said her husband, an English professor, read to her stomach while she was pregnant with Alexa Vaughn, and both parents ensured that their daughter could read as many books as she wanted as she grew older.

“Alexa became an avid reader, so there were lots of trips to the library and the bookstore. At bedtime we couldn’t get her to go sleep, so we allowed her to stay up reading books in her room,” she said.

Vaughn’s brother, Oliver, a third-year political science student at UCLA, said finding out his sister had won a Pulitzer Prize was surreal.

“I look up to her a lot, especially in my academic goals. She’s always set a high bar for me to live up to,” he said.

Alexa Vaughn’s work in journalism started in high school, where she worked on her school’s newspaper. While she was initially interested in feature story writing, she tried political, business and local reporting as time went on.

When Vaughn got to UCLA she joined an entrepreneurial magazine, which she said left her wanting to do more local journalism.

“I want to see the faces of the people I interview and see the places they talk about,” she said.

Vaughn said her love for her community in Seattle guides her in her work.

“Ultimately I’ve always had a watchdog attitude. I like to look out for communities I live in,” she said. “I never had the ambition to get into The New York Times or anything; I truly always wanted to do small journalism for a community that I live in.”

In February, Vaughn left The Seattle Times. She now works as a communications specialist for King County, Wash.

Vaughn said King County is working to reform its criminal justice system, and she plans to set up a blog to track the county’s progress.

Her interest in social justice in the American criminal justice system began after working on an incarceration project while studying at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The ability to quickly become an expert on topics like incarceration is one of the things she loves most about journalism, she said.

“Even though I’ve left journalism for now, I still think I’m doing good work and I’m glad I landed this job. I think the public should be informed about what’s wrong with our criminal justice system because it’s in pretty bad shape,” she said.

Vaughn said her decision to leave journalism has been described by other journalists as “moving to the dark side,” but she disagrees with them.

“It may not be journalism,” she said. “But I get to focus on equity and social justice in my community, which is something I’ve been passionate about for a long time.”