Only two years removed from walking the halls of Penn State, Sara Ganim and her fellow staffers at the Harrisburg Patriot-News have won journalism's most prestigious honor, the Pulitzer Prize, for their coverage of the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State sex abuse scandal that sent shockwaves across central Pennsylvania and beyond in November.

Ganim and the P-N staff won their Pulitzer in local reporting which includes "reporting on significant issues of local concern, demonstrating originality and community expertise, [and] using any available journalistic tool". The committee had this to say about the paper's reporting:

...Awarded to Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff, Harrisburg, Penn., for courageously revealing and adeptly covering the explosive Penn State sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Ganim began working on the story when she was fresh out of Penn State and working at the Centre Daily Times. She then moved onto the Patriot-News where she published a story in March 2011 about Sandusky going in front of a grand jury for possibly indecently assaulting a teenage boy. The story went largely unnoticed until the first weekend in November when charges were brought against Sandusky as well as Penn State administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz.

You can read all of the Patriot-News's award-winning coverage here.

Be sure to become a fan of BSD on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter!