Mark Lamster’s selection as the 2026 recipient for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism is a rare ray of hope in the grim landscape of American journalism. Lamster’s columns in the Dallas Morning News are marked by many virtues, but none are more important than the service they provide to the people of Dallas by informing them, in clear and engaging prose, just what their city government is up to when it comes to major building and public works initiatives.
Reading Lamster’s work is an experience at once refreshing and nostalgic, harkening back to a period when denizens of America’s great cities could count on tenacious local reporters to hold the powerful to account. Today, few cities even have their own newspapers, much less ones with the resources to invest in high-quality local journalism. Many legacy publications — not just local ones, but esteemed national titles like Newsweek — have been hollowed out and turned into low-budget clickbait farms, a phenomenon that commentators have dubbed “zombification.” Peacock’s recent series The Paper, a spinoff of The Office, parodies this state of affairs pretty well in its depiction of a storied Toledo newspaper called the Truth Teller that has been transformed into a cheap shell, running only AP Wire stories and salacious clickbait. But for me, the situation is too bleak to laugh at, and I had to stop watching halfway through the first season.
In Dallas, however, Mark Lamster and the Dallas Morning News carry the torch of intelligent, hard-hitting journalism. In their presentation of the award, the Pulitzer committee called particular attention to Lamster’s fierce opposition to recently introduced plans to demolish Dallas City Hall, a modernist landmark designed by I.M. Pei. In his reporting, Lamster exposes the shadowy and at times dishonest maneuverings of the Dallas City Council, which attempted to push the demolition plans through without meaningfully consulting the public. In combining the best aspects of architecture criticism with the righteous anger of an investigative journalist, Lamster makes a powerful case not only for Dallas City Hall, but for an approach to urban development that puts the public interest ahead of the shortsighted motives of property developers.
Before reading Lamster’s prize-winning columns, I knew very little about Dallas (except, of course, that it shines with an evil light). But through these entertaining and lucid pieces, I learned that I.M. Pei’s City Hall is not just a great work of Brutalist architecture, but a project that embodied the deepest aspirations of the city at midcentury. “City Hall was conceived to represent Dallas at its best. It is bold, forward-looking, ambitious, generous and optimistic,” Lamster explains. “In the evening, when the warm Texas sun sweeps across its front façade, it achieves a beauty that is close to the sublime. Destroying it would be an unforgivable act of self-harm.”…