Our Pulitzer Prize Winning Story

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Yesterday, Esquire achieved a significant milestone in its 92-year-old history: we won our first Pulitzer Prize. The honor was given to Mark Warren's story, "Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy," which we published in March 2024. It won for Feature Writing. Warren is a former Esquire editor, who went to a small community in Alabama to report on the death of Bubba Copeland. His piece not only tells the story of Bubba, but also reveals in vivid and heartbreaking detail the human toll of our deeply divided society. You can read it here. – Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief

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Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy

Bubba Copeland was the heart and soul of his community—mayor, businessman. When a website exposed his deepest secrets, his life wasn't the only thing that was destroyed.

At the First Baptist Church of Phenix City, Alabama, the last Sunday of October 2023 was Pastor Appreciation Day. The church was festive, the service well attended. There was strawberry cake, Pastor Copeland's favorite, and special music in his honor by two of his closest friends, who sang a program of Baptist hymns, accompanying themselves on piano. Bernard Vann, the church's elder statesman, spoke from the pulpit on behalf of the congregation, testifying as to how blessed they all felt that Bubba Copeland had entered their lives and bestowed his gifts, bound them together as a spiritual community. After reading a very long list of duties that make up a churchman's life, Vann ribbed Bubba that he sure was getting a lot of attention that day for a job that's just "one day a week." Then he turned to Bubba and said, "We as a church love you, and we appreciate you for everything you've done," with the true feeling of an old man, as he embraced his pastor.

Bubba would often talk about how his life had been suffused with a grace that was beyond his comprehension. He believed that was the essence of God, and today he was telling his congregation that if God could love him—of all people—it was a sure sign that God loved everyone created in His image.

That last Sunday of October 2023 would be the last Sunday of Bubba Copeland's life.

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