NEW YORK –
The prestigious Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism was awarded Monday to ProPublica for its “groundbreaking” reporting that revealed how billionaires wooed Supreme Court justices with gifts and travel, and The Associated Press was honoured in the feature photography category for its coverage of immigration to the U.S. through Latin America.
The public service award honoured the work of ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg.
AP’s photos were taken across Latin America and along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and California in a year when immigration was one of the biggest stories in the world. The award honoured 15 photos by AP staffers Greg Bull, Eric Gay, Fernando Llano, Marco Ugarte and Eduardo Verdugo, and longtime AP freelancers Christian Chavez, Felix Marquez and Ivan Valencia.
Along with honouring winners and finalists in 15 journalism categories, the Pulitzer Board also recognizes distinguished work in areas including books, music and theater.
The prizes, established in the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, are administered by Columbia University in New York.
The prizes 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.
The board issued a statement Thursday saluting student journalists at Columbia and other universities across the country for their work covering the campus demonstrations.
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. The work must be primarily in digital journalism, 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 give out cash awards and a medal for its prestigious public service prize, won last year by The Associated Press for its coverage of the Russian siege of Mariupol in Ukraine.
