The Latest: 3 newspapers cited for gun violence coverage
NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on the Pulitzer Prizes (all times local):
3:45 p.m.
Three Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded to newspapers for their coverage of gun violence.
The Pulitzer for public service was awarded Monday to the South Florida Sun Sentinel for its coverage of the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018. Seventeen students and staff were killed in the shooting.
The prize for breaking news reporting went to went to the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for coverage of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last October. That attack killed 11 people.
The Capital Gazette was given a special citation for its coverage and courage in the face of a massacre in its own newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. The newspaper published on schedule the day after the shooting claimed five staffers’ lives. It was one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in U.S. history. The man charged in the attack had a longstanding grudge against the paper.
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3:40 p.m.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting on President Donald Trump.
The Journal won its Pulitzer in national reporting for its investigations of hush money payments orchestrated by the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to silence women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
The New York Times was awarded a Pulitzer in explanatory reporting for investigation of Trump family tax schemes that helped the president’s father pass on millions of dollars to his children while minimizing inheritance taxes.
Trump has denied having affairs with the women.
He has also denied that his family did anything improper regarding his taxes, calling the Times report a “hit piece.”
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3:35 p.m.
Aretha Franklin has been given an honorary Pulitzer Prize, cited posthumously for her extraordinary career.
Pulitzer judges also awarded Richard Powers’ innovative novel “The Overstory” the fiction prize and named David W. Blight’s 900-page “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” the best work of history.
On Monday, the biography prize went to Jeffrey C. Stewart’s “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke,” and the drama award to “Fairview,” by Jackie Sibblies Drury. Eliza Griswold’s “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America” won for general nonfiction, and Ellen Reid’s opera “p r i s m” for music. The poetry award was given to Forrest Gander’s elegiac “Be With.”
Franklin, who died last summer, is the first woman singled out for an honorary Pulitzer, which has been given to Bob Dylan and John Coltrane, among others.
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3:30 p.m.
A team of Associated Press journalists has won a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for their work documenting torture, graft and starvation in Yemen’s brutal civil war.
The prize was announced Monday in New York at Columbia University.
Reporter Maggie Michael, photographer Nariman El-Mofty and videographer Maad al-Zikry spent a year uncovering atrocities and suffering in Yemen.
In a series of stories, they told of how people in parts of Yemen were reduced to eating leaves while corrupt officials diverted international food aid.
Reuters also won for international reporting for work that cost two of its staffers their liberty: shedding light on a brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims by security forces in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are serving a seven-year sentence after being convicted of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act. Their supporters say the two were framed in retaliation for their reporting.
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9:10 a.m.
The newest winners of the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism and the arts are set to be revealed.
This year’s honorees will be announced Monday at Columbia University in New York.
The journalism awards will recognize exceptional work in 2018 by U.S. newspapers, magazines and online outlets. There are 14 categories for reporting, photography, criticism, commentary and cartoons.
Arts prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music.
The first journalism prizes were awarded in 1917, and they have come to be considered the field’s most prestigious honor in the U.S.
The contest was established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer.
Winners of the public service award receive a gold medal. The other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.
