Gateway Journalism Review honored two St. Louis journalists at its eighth annual First Amendment Celebration on April 25.

Tony Messenger, a metro columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Lauren Trager, an investigative reporter for KMOV, were awarded the Freedom Fighter Award for their work.

Earlier this month Messenger won the Pulitzer Prize for his series of columns on debtors prisons in Missouri.

“These people showed tremendous courage to share their stories with me at a time in which we didn’t know what the supreme court was going to do, and we didn’t know what the Missouri legislature was going to do,” Messenger said in his acceptance speech. “Thank goodness the Missouri Supreme Court ruled this human tragedy has got to stop.”  

Trager is the reporter who led the investigation and broke the story in January 2018 about former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens’ extramarital affair. The story eventually led Greitens to resign.

“As a wise person recently said to me, it is not our job to just cover the news, we must uncover it too. My commitment to that is now as steadfast as ever,” Trager said in her acceptance speech.