News
Herzlia alumnus wins Pulitzer Prize
Peter Hirschberg, who was born in Cape Town and made aliya in the 1980s, accepted the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting at an awards ceremony in New York City on Wednesday.
TALI FEINBERG
He is the Reuters Asia Investigative Editor of the team which won the award for their investigative journalism exposing a bloody drug crackdown in the Philippines. The Pulitzer Prize is arguably the most coveted award for journalists.
Hirschberg attended Herzlia School in Cape Town where he was head boy, and he went on to marry the head girl of the same year, Chanine Odes. He completed a degree in political science from the University of Cape Town and a Master’s in political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He was deeply involved in Habonim in South Africa, including being head of the Cape Town branch in 1987. He made aliya as a part of a Habonim kvutzah in 1988, starting out on an ulpan on Kibbutz Sdot Yam in Caesaria.
His career began at the Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Report, followed by seven years at the English edition of Ha’aretz, where he was a founding editor. He then moved to Hong Kong and business media company Bloomberg.
He is currently based in Australia for Reuters, where he manages the Asia Enterprise team, heading investigative and enterprise coverage across Asia.