Messenger started writing about court costs and other criminal justice issues, often in small-town Missouri, in 2017. He has written more than 25 columns on the subject. His Pulitzer entry submitted 10, printed from Jan. 5 to Dec. 9, 2018.

Those columns, said Michael Wolff, a retired Missouri Supreme Court chief justice and former dean of the St. Louis University School of Law, tell the story of prosecutors and judges across the state putting people in jail simply because they are poor.

“It is a rare and beautiful thing when solid reporting so shocks the legal system that change becomes inevitable,” Wolff wrote in support of Messenger’s nomination. “Tony Messenger is making that kind of impact.”

Messenger, 52, has worked at the Post-Dispatch since 2008, first as a statehouse reporter, then editor of the editorial page and, since 2015, as the paper’s metro columnist.