Julie K. Brown receives Pulitzer Prize special citation for her work on Jeffrey Epstein case

Journalist Julie K. Brown, a Bucks County native who spent years at the Daily News, has received a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize committee for her work regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

Brown, 64, a longtime investigative reporter at the Miami Herald, spent years digging into the sweetheart plea deal prosecutors gave Palm Beach billionaire for his sex crimes. Her work led to Epstein’s arrest in 2019.

On Monday, Pulitzer administrator Marjorie Miller announced Brown’s special citation during the livestreamed Pulitzer awards ceremony. Brown’s work in 2017 and 2018, “gives voice to the scores of victims that had been groomed and abused” by Epstein, Miller said.

“Her work, and the government’s release of the Epstein files, continue to reverberate around the world.”

When The Inquirer visited Brown at her Old City condo earlier this year, Brown said she didn’t get into journalism to win awards. On Monday, she cited her love of Philly sports after learning about the honor.

“Being on my own from a young age, I’ve had many lean years and times filled with a lot of self-doubt,” Brown told The Inquirer on Monday. “I sometimes don’t even know how I survived this business. All I can say — to quote the great Jason Kelce — is hungry dogs run faster.”

Brown spent two years reading through court documents in Florida and reaching out to Epstein’s victims with Herald photographer and videographer Emily Michot. Their work culminated in the Herald’s 2018 award-winning series “Perversion of Justice.” Brown published a book by the same name in 2021. Laura Dern has been slated to portray Brown in a series based on the book.

Brown’s work led to Epstein’s arrest in 2019, and she continued to pursue the story, even after his alleged suicide later that year. When The Inquirer visited her Old City condo in February, Brown was still wading through the heavily redacted Epstein files while fielding endless calls from television producers.

Brown’s “Perversion of Justice” series won a prestigious George Polk award. The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz, the attorney and television personality who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.

The Pulitzer Prizes are awarded through Columbia University and are “designed to celebrate excellence in journalism, arts, and letters,” according to the organization’s website. The awards are usually given for exceptional work done over the past year across 23 categories, including public service, breaking news photography, and illustrated reporting and commentary. However, in some years, the Pulitzer board awards a special citation to journalists as they see fit.

Previous recipients of the special citation include the late Chuck Stone, another former Daily News reporter, for his work in civil rights reporting and the journalists of Ukraine for their “courage, endurance, and commitment to truthful reporting” during the invasion of Ukraine.

Brown was one of the Herald staff members awarded a Pulitzer in breaking news in 2022 for coverage of the Surfside condominium collapse.

Brown, a diehard Philadelphia sports fan, was raised by a single mother in Sellersville, Bucks County, and worked her way up through smaller local newspapers after graduating from Temple University. Lean times as a child, including a memory of the family furniture being taken for unpaid bills, influenced her decision to become an investigative reporter.

“I’ve always gravitated toward stories about the voiceless and the injustice,” she told the Inquirer. “I always remember them coming and taking the furniture from my mother’s house. That, to me, seemed so unjust, and it just affected me in a way I’ve never forgotten.”

Brown said her dream was to work at The Inquirer, but she wound up at the Daily News in 1996 and found the tabloid “People Paper” was a graduate school of sorts.

“That’s really where I started,” Brown said of the Daily News. “I learned so much there, too: about the world, about journalism, about writing, about competition, about people. I loved it. It had so much personality, and it also let you have personality.”

Brown, who has two children, Jake and Amelia, left for the Miami Herald in 2005. She was an editor, at first, and went back to reporting, eventually. She spent years uncovering abuse in Florida’s correctional system, focusing on its women’s prison in Lowell. That series, “Beyond Punishment,” won Brown her first Polk award.

While Brown owns an oceanfront apartment in Hollywood, Fla., she spends a lot of time at her Old City condo.

“I decided this is a good place for me to come and get sane from Florida because Florida is insane,” Brown said in February. “Philly is in my bones. I would not be where I am right now if not for Philadelphia.”