Journalist Jonathan Capehart ’89 has won a slew of awards for his writing and reporting, including a Pulitzer Prize. But sometimes the recognition is more than just professionally rewarding—it’s personally gratifying. This spring, the Association of LGBTQ Journalists honored Capehart, currently an opinion writer at the Washington Post, with the Randy Shilts Award for LGBTQ Coverage.
Capehart, who married his longtime boyfriend in 2016, says he never met Shilts, the openly gay author of And the Band Played On and several other books, who died in 1992. “But I knew him as a giant in the profession,” Capehart says. “He was a journalist who wanted to get the story. From the AIDS epidemic to the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, Shilts told our stories and he did so with the rigor that journalism demanded. In doing so, he made our lives real for people who didn’t want to see us.”