Virginia Irwin – 2014
Working for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Virginia Irwin was the first woman reporter to sneak into Berlin to cover the Russian Army’s invasion of the German capital. She reached Berlin three days before Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Unfortunately, her stories were held-up by the U.S. Army for 10 days until after Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945. The first of her three stories finally splashed across the Post’s front page the next day to the delight of Publisher Joseph Pulitzer II, who rewarded Irwin by giving her an extra year’s pay as a bonus.