PUBLIC SERVICE
ProPublica
The Pulitzer Committee honored ProPublica for the work of Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg, citing their “groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that broke the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court.”
Finalists KFF Health News and Cox Media Group; The Washington Post
BREAKING NEWS
Santa Cruz Lookout Personnel
Lookout Santa Cruz won for “its detailed and deft, community-focused reporting, over a holiday weekend, of catastrophic flooding and mudslides that displaced thousands of residents and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses.”
Finalists Honolulu Civil Beat Staff; Los Angeles Times staff
RESEARCH REPORTING
Hannah Dreier of The New York Times
Ms. Dreier was honored for “a deeply reported series of stories that reveal the staggering extent of migrant child labor in the United States – and the failures of companies and governments that perpetuate this labor.”
Finalists Bloomberg Staff; Casey Ross and Robert Herman of Stat
EXPLANATORY REPORTING
Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker
Ms. Stillman's work was a “poignant indictment of our justice system's reliance on the murder charge and its disparate consequences, often devastating to communities of color,” the commission said.
Finalists Bloomberg Staff; Staff of The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and Frontline
LOCAL REPORTING
Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute
Ms. Conway and Ms. Reynolds-Tyler were honored for “their investigative series on missing Black girls and women in Chicago, which revealed how systemic racism and police neglect have contributed to the crisis.”
Finalists Jerry Mitchell, Ilyssa Daly, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield of Mississippi Today and The New York Times; Staff at The Villages Daily Sun
NATIONAL REPORTING
Reuters staff and The Washington Post staff
The national reporting category had two winners this year. Reuters staff won for “a startling series of accountability stories” focused on the auto and aerospace sectors, backed by billionaire Elon Musk. The Washington Post staff won for “its sobering examination of the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.”
Finalists Bianca Vázquez Toness and Sharon Lurye of The Associated Press; Dave Philipps of The New York Times
INTERNATIONAL REPORTING
Employees of The New York Times
The New York Times won for its “broad and revealing coverage of the deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, the failure of Israel's intelligence services and the Israeli army's sweeping, deadly response in Gaza,” the committee said .
Finalists Julie Turkewitz and Federico Rios of The New York Times; Staff of The Washington Post
Write function
Katie Engelhart, Contributing Writer, The New York Times
Ms. Engelhart was honored “for her honest portrayal of a family's legal and emotional struggles during a matriarch's progressive dementia.” Her article “sensitively explores the mystery of one's essential self,” the committee said.
Finalists Keri Blakinger of The Marshall Project, published in association with The New York Times Magazine; Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic
COMMENTARY
Vladimir Kara-Murza, Contributor, The Washington Post
The committee highlighted Mr. Kara-Murza's “passionate columns, written at great personal risk from his prison cell, in which he warned of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin's Russia and urged a democratic future for his country.”
Finalists Brian Lyman of the Alabama Reflector; Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker
CRITICISM
Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times
The film criticism of Mr. Chang “reflects on the contemporary cinematic experience,” the committee said, praising the film as “richly evocative and genre-spanning.”
Finalists Zadie Smith, Contributor, The New York Review of Books; Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker
EDITORIAL WRITING
David E. Hoffman of The Washington Post
Mr. Hoffman was honored for his “compelling and well-researched series on new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to suppress dissent in the digital age and how to combat them.”
Finalists Isadora Rangel of The Miami Herald; Brandon McGinley and Rebecca Spiess of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Illustrated reporting and commentary
Medar de la Cruz, contributor, The New Yorker
Mr. de la Cruz was honored for “his visually driven story set in Rikers Island Prison, using bold black-and-white images that humanize the inmates and staff through their thirst for books.”
Finalists Clay Bennett of The Chattanooga Times Free Press; Angie Wang, Contributor, The New Yorker; Claire Healy, Nicole Dungca and Ren Galeno, Contributor, of The Washington Post
BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY
Reuters photography staff
The photography staff won for “raw and urgent photographs documenting Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel and the first weeks of Israel's devastating assault on Gaza.”
Finalists Adem Altan of Agence France Presse; Nicole S. Hester of The Tennessean
FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography staff of The Associated Press
The journalists were honored for “poignant photographs capturing unprecedented masses of migrants and their arduous journey north from Colombia to the United States border.”
Finalists Nanna Heitmann, Contributor, The New York Times; Hannah Reyes Morales, Contributor, The New York Times
AUDIO REPORTING
Employees of the Invisible Institute and USG Audio
The two editors won for a “powerful series that reexamines a 1990s Chicago hate crime, a fluid amalgam of memoir, community history and journalism.”
Finalists Dan Slepian and Preeti Varathan, Contributor, of NBC News; Lauren Chooljian, Alison Macadam, Jason Moon, Daniel Barrick and Katie Colaneri of New Hampshire Public Radio
FICTION
'Night Watch' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Ms. Phillips won for her “beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia's Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War, where a seriously wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, are long abused by a Confederate Soldier, Struggle to Heal.”
Finalists “Wednesday Child,” by Yiyun Li; “Same Bed, Different Dreams,” by Ed Park
DRAMA
'Primary Trust', by Eboni Booth
The committee described Ms Booth's play 'Primary Trust' as a 'simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of self-worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can make a person's life change. and enrich an entire community.”
Finalists “Here Are Blueberries,” by Moses Kaufman and Amanda Gronich; 'Public Obscenities', by Shayok Misha Chowdhury
HISTORY
“No Right to an Fair Life: The Struggle of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era,” by Jacqueline Jones
Ms. Jones was recognized for her “original reconstruction of free black life in Boston, which profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city's abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its black residents.”
Finalists “Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion,” by Elliott West; “American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” by Michael Willrich
Two prizes were awarded in this category. Mr. Eig was honored for “a revealing portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of every phase of the civil rights leader's life.”
Ms. Woo was honored for her story about the Crafts, “an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her servant.”
Finalists “Larry McMurtry: A Life,” by Tracy Daugherty
MEMOIR OR AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Quest for Justice,” by Cristina Rivera Garza
The committee called Ms. Rivera Garza's work “a genre-bending account of the author's 20-year-old sister,” who was murdered by a former boyfriend. It “blends memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography, brought together with a determination born of loss,” the committee said.
Finalists “The Land of the Blind: A Memoir of the End of Sight,” by Andrew Leland; “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions,” by Jonathan Rosen
Mr. Som's work is “a collection that delves deeply into the complexities of the poet's dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family's working life and creating community rather than conflict,” wrote the committee.
Finalists “Until 2040,” by Jorie Graham; “Information Desk: An Epic,” by Robyn Schiff
GENERAL NNFICTION
“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” by Nathan Thrall
The committee honored Mr. Thrall for his “finely reported and intimate account of life under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash as Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams run.” delayed due to safety regulations.”
Finalists “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of Congo Powers Our Lives,” by Siddharth Kara; “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World,” by John Vaillant
MUSIC
“Adagio (for Wadada Leo Smith),” by Tyshawn Sorey
Mr. Sorey's saxophone concerto presented “a wide range of textures at a slow tempo, a beautiful tribute that is quietly intense and cherishes intimacy rather than spectacle,” the committee said.
Finalists “Paper Pianos,” by Mary Kouyoumdjian; “Double concerto for Esperanza Spalding, Claire Chase and large orchestra”, by Felipe Lara
Special quotes
Greg Tate
The writer and critic Greg Tate was posthumously honored for his influence in shaping public thinking and language surrounding hip hop and street art. “His aesthetics, innovations, and intellectual originality, especially in his groundbreaking hip-hop criticism, continue to influence generations to come, especially writers and critics of color,” the committee wrote.
Journalists and media workers reporting on the war in Gaza
“An extraordinary number of journalists have died under horrific circumstances as they tried to tell the stories of Palestinians and others in Gaza,” the commission wrote. “This war has also claimed the lives of poets and writers among its victims. While the Pulitzer Prizes honor categories of journalism, arts and letters, we mark the loss of priceless data about the human experience.”