NEW YORK — The Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography Monday for its coverage of global migration through Latin America to the U.S., while The New York Times and the Washington Post each won three Pulitzer Prizes for their work in 2023.
The Times and Reuters news service each won Pulitzers for their coverage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and its aftermath.
The Pulitzers’ prestigious award in public service went to ProPublica for reporting that “pierced the thick wall of secrecy” around the U.S. Supreme Court to show how billionaires gave gifts and travel to justices.
The Pulitzers also issued special citations to journalists and writers covering the war in Gaza, and to the late hip-hop critic Greg Tate.
The Pulitzers honored the best in journalism from 2023 in 15 categories, as well as eight arts categories focused on books, music and theater. The public service winner receives a gold medal. All other winners receive $15,000.
Chicago historian Jonathan Eig won the prize for biography for “King: A Life,” his 2023 biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., a bestseller recognized for its monumental scope and new findings. Even some previous King biographers have called Eig’s work the new definitive history of the civil rights leader. The Pulitzer committee cited Eig’s book as a “revelatory portrait” and one that “draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination.”
The 15 photos in AP’s winning entry were taken across Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and California, during a year in which immigration was one of the world’s biggest stories. They were shot by staff photographers Greg Bull, Eric Gay, Fernando Llano, Marco Ugarte and Eduardo Verdugo, and longtime AP freelance photographers Christian Chavez, Felix Marquez and Ivan Valencia won Pulitzers for their work.
“These raw and emotional images came about through day-to-day coverage of a historic moment in multiple countries documenting migrants at every step of their treacherous journeys,” said Julie Pace, the AP’s senior vice president and executive editor.
The United States has seen more than 10 million border arrivals in the last five years, with migrants arriving from a wide range of new locations like Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti and Africa, in contrast with earlier eras.
The AP has won 59 Pulitzer Prizes, including 36 for photography. The news cooperative was named a finalist for the national reporting Pulitzer on Monday for its coverage of hundreds of thousands of children who disappeared from public schools during the pandemic.
The staff of The New York Times won for its “wide-ranging and revelatory coverage” of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the intelligence failures by Israel and the country’s response in Gaza. The award comes even as The Times has faced some controversy about its coverage; last month a group of journalism professors called on The New York Times to address questions about an investigation into gender-based violence during the Hamas attack on Israel.
The Times’ Hannah Dreier won a Pulitzer in investigative reporting for her stories on migrant child labor across the United States. Contributing writer Katie Engelhart won the newspaper’s third Pulitzer, in feature writing, for her portrait of a family struggling with a matriarch’s dementia.
The Washington Post staff won in national reporting for its “sobering examination” of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, which came with some gut-wrenching photos. The Post’s David E. Hoffman won in editorial writing for a “compelling and well-researched” series on how authoritarian regimes repress dissent in the digital age. Its third award went to contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza, for commentaries written from a Russian prison cell.
The public service award honored ProPublica reporters Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg, whose stories prompted the Supreme Court to adopt its first code of conduct.
The New Yorker magazine won two Pulitzers. Sarah Stillman won in explanatory reporting for her report on the legal system’s reliance on felony murder charges. Contributor Medar de la Cruz won in illustrated reporting and commentary for his story humanizing inmates in the Rikers Island jail in New York City.
The staff of Lookout Santa Cruz in California won a Pulitzer in breaking news reporting for what the prize board called “nimble community-minded coverage” of flooding and mudslides.
In local reporting, Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute won for an investigative series on missing Black girls and women in Chicago, and how racism and the police response contributed to the problem.
Besides the Post, the Pulitzers gave a second award in national reporting to the Reuters staff for an “eye-opening” series that probed Elon Musk’s automobile and aerospace businesses.
The photo staff of Reuters won that agency’s second Pulitzer of the day for its coverage of the Hamas attack on Israel and the first week of the country’s response in Gaza.
The Pulitzer in criticism went to Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times for evocative and genre-spanning coverage of movies.
The Pulitzers are administered by Columbia University in New York, which itself has been in the news for student demonstrations against the war in Gaza. The Pulitzer board met away from Columbia this past weekend to deliberate on its winners.
For the first time, the Pulitzers opened eligibility to broadcast and audio companies that also operate digital news sites, such as CNN, NPR and the broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC. None of these companies won, however.
The Columbia Journalism School also administers the duPont-Columbia Awards, which recognize audio and visual journalism and are presented in the winter.
The Pulitzers also announced that five of the 45 finalists this year used artificial intelligence in research and reporting of their submissions. It was the first time the board required applicants for the award to disclose use of AI.
The prizes were established in the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer and first awarded in 1917.
