John Woodrow Cox

Washington, D.C.

Enterprise reporter with a focus on narrative journalism
John Woodrow Cox is an enterprise reporter at The Washington Post and the author of Children Under Fire: An American Crisis. In 2018, his series about the impact of gun violence on children in America was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He was also part of the team of Post journalists awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. He has won Scripps Howard's Ernie Pyle Award for Human Interest Storytelling, the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, Columbia Journalism School’s Meyer “Mike” Berger A
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Latest from John Woodrow Cox

    Are there warning signs? What we learned from covering school shootings.

    Washington Post journalists John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich chatted with readers about gun violence on Wednesday

    May 3, 2023

    A school shooting left a 7-year-old terrified to go back. At 13, she found a way.

    Ava Olsen was too traumatized to step inside a classroom for six years. Would her seventh-grade return be derailed by news of another elementary school shooting?

    May 1, 2023

    The number of students who have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine

    The Washington Post for years has tracked the number of students affected by school shootings. Since 1999, over 300,000 children have experienced gun violence during school hours.

    April 3, 2023

      Journalists covering shootings share what’s stuck with them

      Enterprise reporter John Woodrow Cox and database editor for investigations Steven Rich have been reporting on gun violence for years.

      February 17, 2023

      She survived a high school shooting. At Michigan State, it happened again.

      Emma Riddle was a senior at Oxford High School in 2021 when four of her classmates were killed. On Monday night, the Michigan State freshman texted her father, "I'm so scared," during another mass shooting.

      February 14, 2023

      After Parkland: What we’ve learned tracking school shootings for 5 years

      The total number of children exposed to gun violence at school has exploded, rising from 187,000 in 2018 to 338,000 now, a Washington Post analysis shows.

      February 14, 2023

      Gun owners favor requiring parents to lock up weapons. It’s lawmakers who don’t.

      After a 6-year-old shot a teacher in Virginia, there will be another push for safe gun storage laws around the country. Most are likely to fail.

      January 26, 2023

      A 6-year-old is accused of shooting someone at school. He isn’t the first.

      The boy who allegedly shot a teacher in Newport News, Va., is not the only young child to wreak havoc at elementary school with a loaded gun

      January 11, 2023

      Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, who took on the NRA, to retire from group she created

      Watts, who launched Moms Demand a decade ago after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, ignored death threats as she built the organization into a political juggernaut.

      January 9, 2023

      Before and after Sandy Hook: 40 years of elementary school shooting survivors

      On the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, four survivors of elementary school shootings, ages 52 to 10, talk about what it’s done to them.

      December 11, 2022