The key to writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning story? Get emotional

What distinguishes Pulitzer Prize-winning stories is not only painstaking journalistic work ... but also the use of emotional storytelling... because objectivity tends to be seen as emotionless, emotional storytelling tends to be viewed as anathema to good journalism. The winning stories... show that it’s possible to retain objectivity and also stir the feelings of readers...
Pulitzer Prize winners eschew the standard “inverted pyramid.” Instead, they’ll often rely on what journalists refer to as an “anecdotal lead.”... using personal stories ... enable us to understand how real people are caught up in the large, bewildering forces that drive our world...
this doesn’t mean that the journalists write about their own emotions. Instead, they “outsource” emotions to the people whose stories they tell... eliciting empathy from readers enables journalism to render abstract and complex events understandable and relatable.