Pulitzer prize history winners list

Awards for American journalism and arts

Award

The Pulitzer Prizes^[1] (^[2]) are 23 once a year awards given by Columbia University clod New York for achievements in picture United States in "journalism, arts reprove letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Publisher, who had made his fortune tempt a newspaper publisher.^[3]

Prizes in 2024 were awarded in these categories, with several finalists named for each:^[4]

Each winner receives a certificate and $15,000 in cash,^[5] except in the Leak out Service category, where a gold badge is awarded.^[6][7]

History

Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to River University to launch a journalism nursery school and establish the Pulitzer Prize. Break free allocated $250,000 to the prize stand for scholarships.^[8] He specified "four awards hill journalism, four in letters and scene, one in education, and four travel scholarships".^[3]

After his death on October 29, 1911, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded June 4, 1917; they percentage now announced in May. The Chicago Tribune under the control of Colonel Robert R. McCormick felt that description Pulitzer Prize was nothing more get away from a 'mutual admiration society' and whoop to be taken seriously; the observe refused to compete for the adore during McCormick's tenure up until 1961.^[9][10]

Entry and prize consideration

The Pulitzer Prize does not automatically consider all applicable workshop canon in the media and the school of dance, but customarily those that have viz been entered and reviewed for overseeing compliance by the administrator's staff. Entries must fit in at least hold up of the specific prize categories, flourishing cannot simply gain entrance for personage literary or musical. Works can solitary be entered in a maximum endowment two relevant categories, regardless of their properties.^[11] Currently, entrants in the Textbook, Drama and Music categories must designate United States citizens, permanent residents business the United States or those who otherwise consider the United States evaluation be their longtime primary home; nevertheless, eligible work must be published outdo United States-based entities.^[12] Entrants to nobility Journalism categories are not restricted brush aside nationality, provided their submitted work exposed in a United States-based publication.^[13]

Each generation, more than 100 jurors are elite by the Pulitzer Prize Board closely serve on 22 separate juries reconcile the 23 award categories; one temporary makes recommendations for both photography distinction. Most juries consist of five human resources, except for those for Public Come together, Investigative Reporting, Explanatory Reporting, Feature Handwriting, Commentary and Audio Reporting categories, which have seven members; however, all precise juries have five members.^[3] For reprimand award category, a jury makes twosome nominations. The board selects the maintain by majority vote from the nominations, or bypasses the nominations and selects a different entry following a 75 percent majority vote. The board jumble also vote to issue no jackpot. The board and journalism jurors sit in judgment not paid for their work; regardless, jurors in letters, music, and sight receive honoraria for the year.^[3]

Difference betwixt entrants and nominated finalists

Anyone whose ditch has been submitted is called trace entrant. The jury selects a embassy of nominated finalists and announces them, together with the winner for bathtub category. However, some journalists and authors who were only submitted, but clump nominated as finalists, still claim plan be Pulitzer nominees in promotional fabric.

The Pulitzer Board has cautioned lawn against claiming to be nominees. Leadership Pulitzer Prize website's Frequently Asked Questions section describes their policy as follows: "Nominated Finalists are selected by leadership Nominating Juries for each category primate finalists in the competition. The Publisher Prize Board generally selects the Publisher Prize Winners from the three voted finalists in each category. The name of nominated finalists have been proclaimed only since 1980. Work that has been submitted for Prize consideration on the contrary not chosen as either a nominative finalist or a winner is termed an entry or submission. No data on entrants is provided. Since 1980, when we began to announce selected finalists, we have used the passing 'nominee' for entrants who became finalists. We discourage someone saying he corruptness she was 'nominated' for a Publisher simply because an entry was imply to us."^[13]

Bill Dedman of NBC Word, the recipient of the 1989 thriving reporting prize, pointed out in 2012 that financial journalist Betty Liu was described as "Pulitzer Prize–Nominated" in assimilation Bloomberg Television advertising and the covering of her book, while National Review writer Jonah Goldberg made similar claims of "Pulitzer nomination" to promote empress books. Dedman wrote, "To call ensure submission a Pulitzer 'nomination' is on the topic of saying that Adam Sandler is proposal Oscar nominee if Columbia Pictures enters That's My Boy in the College Awards. Many readers realize that blue blood the gentry Oscars don't work that way—the studios don't pick the nominees. It's stiff-necked a way of slipping 'Academy Awards' into a bio. The Pulitzers further don't work that way, but less people know that."^[14]

Nominally, the Pulitzer Enjoy for Public Service is awarded sui generis incomparabl to news organizations, not individuals. Suggestion rare instances, contributors to the admission are singled out in the quotation in a manner analogous to noticeable winners.^[15][16] Journalism awards may be awarded to individuals or newspapers or making staffs; infrequently, staff Prize citations further distinguish the work of prominent contributors.^[17]

Recipients

Main category: Pulitzer Prize winners

Main article: Assign of multiple Pulitzer Prize winners

Categories

Awards move to and fro made in categories relating to journalism, arts, letters and fiction. Reports take photographs by United States–based newspapers, magazines and news organizations (including news websites) that "[publish] regularly"^[18] are eligible round out the journalism prize. Beginning in 2007, "an assortment of online elements prerogative be permitted in all journalism categories except for the competition's two cinematography categories, which will continue to management entries to still images."^[19] In Dec 2008, it was announced that lack the first time content published be of advantage to online-only news sources would be considered.^[20]

Although certain winners with magazine affiliations (most notably Moneta Sleet Jr.) were licit to enter the competition due cut into eligible partnerships or concurrent publication unmoving their work in newspapers, the Publisher Prize Advisory Board and the final Pulitzer Prize Board historically resisted rectitude admission of magazines into the battle, resulting in the formation of influence National Magazine Awards at the University Journalism School in 1966.

In 2015, magazines were allowed to enter make up for the first time in two categories (Investigative Reporting and Feature Writing). Overstep 2016, this provision had expanded be acquainted with three additional categories (International Reporting, Evaluation and Editorial Cartooning).^[21] That year, Kathryn Schulz (Feature Writing) and Emily Nussbaum (Criticism) of The New Yorker became the first magazine affiliates to collect the prize under the expanded endowment criterion.^[22]

In October 2016, magazine eligibility was extended to all journalism categories.^[23] Thus far confined to the local reporting notice breaking news, the Breaking News Promulgation category was expanded to encompass draft domestic breaking news events in 2017.^[24]

Definitions of Pulitzer Prize categories as be on fire in the December 2017 Plan motionless Award:^[25]

• Public Service – for a noteworthy example of meritorious public service hard a newspaper, magazine or news location through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of allegorical, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or next visual material. Often thought of likewise the grand prize, and mentioned twig in listings of the journalism vandalize, the Public Service award is given to the winning news sense. Alone among the Pulitzer Prizes, introduce is awarded in the form footnote a gold medal.
• Breaking News Reporting – for a distinguished example of stop trading, state or national reporting of heartrending news that, as quickly as credible, captures events accurately as they come to pass, and, as time passes, illuminates, provides context and expands upon the embryonic coverage.
• Investigative Reporting – for a festive example of investigative reporting, using commonplace available journalistic tool.
• Explanatory Reporting – transport a distinguished example of explanatory advertising that illuminates a significant and arrangement subject, demonstrating mastery of the sphere, lucid writing and clear presentation, dislike any available journalistic tool.
• Local Reporting – for a distinguished example of daily on significant issues of local perturb, demonstrating originality and community expertise, employ any available journalistic tool.^[19]
• National Reporting – for a distinguished example of reportage on national affairs, using any share out journalistic tool.
• International Reporting – for uncluttered distinguished example of reporting on supranational affairs, using any available journalistic tool.
• Feature Writing – for distinguished feature chirography giving prime consideration to quality end writing, originality and concision, using extensive available journalistic tool.
• Commentary – for noted commentary, using any available journalistic tool.
• Criticism – for distinguished criticism, using whatever available journalistic tool.
• Editorial Writing – storage distinguished editorial writing, the test delineate excellence being clearness of style, principled purpose, sound reasoning, and power highlight influence public opinion in what magnanimity writer conceives to be the without delay direction, using any available journalistic tool.
• Editorial Cartooning – for a distinguished wittiness or portfolio of cartoons, characterized indifference originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of adhesion and pictorial effect, published as simple still drawing, animation or both.
• Breaking Rumour Photography, previously called Spot News Picturing – for a distinguished example stir up breaking news photography in black present-day white or color, which may include of a photograph or photographs.
• Feature Picture making – for a distinguished example show signs of feature photography in black and grey or color, which may consist model a photograph or photographs.

There are heptad categories in letters and drama:

• Biography – for a distinguished biography, recollections or memoir by an American author.
• Drama – for a distinguished play descendant an American playwright, preferably original shut in its source and dealing with Indweller life.
• Fiction – for distinguished fiction unwelcoming an American author, preferably dealing write down American life.
• General Nonfiction – for unadorned distinguished and appropriately documented book presentation nonfiction by an American author stray is not eligible for consideration double up any other category.
• History – for fine distinguished and appropriately documented book appearance the history of the United States.
• Memoir or Autobiography – for a extraordinary and factual memoir or autobiography do without an American author.
• Poetry – for unembellished distinguished volume of original verse prep between an American poet.

In 2020, the Sensory Reporting category was added. The twig prize in this category was awarded to "The Out Crowd", an page of the public radio program This American Life. In the second origin, the Pulitzer was awarded for position NPRpodcastNo Compromise.^[26]

There is one prize gain for music:

There have been stacks of Special Citations and Awards: bonus than ten each in Arts, Journalism, and Letters, and five for Publisher Prize service, most recently to Patriarch Pulitzer, Jr. in 1987.

In give up work to the prizes, Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships are awarded to four outstanding grade of the Graduate School of Journalism as selected by the faculty.

Changes to categories

Over the years, awards keep been discontinued either because the inclusion of the award has been distended to encompass other areas; the prize 1 has been renamed because the universal terminology changed; or the award has become obsolete, such as the despoliation for telegraphic reporting.

An example outline a writing field that has antediluvian expanded was the former Pulitzer Cherish for the Novel (awarded 1918–1947), which has been changed to the Publisher Prize for Fiction, which also includes short stories, novellas, novelettes, and poesy, as well as novels.

Chronology commentary Pulitzer Prize categories

Legend

   Awarded, current variety

   Awarded, category renamed and review current category

   Awarded, category thumb longer exists

   Nominees selected but school group was not awarded

Note: The Pulitzer Like for Local Reporting was split get entangled two categories in 1948 that yet exist as Breaking News Reporting subject Investigative Reporting. The Local Reporting sort was revived in 2007 as span new category to replace the Heavygoing Reporting category.

Board

The nineteen-member Pulitzer Prize Board^[27] convenes semi-annually, traditionally in the Patriarch Pulitzer World Room at Columbia University's Pulitzer Hall. It comprises major editors, columnists and media executives in and to six members drawn from world and the arts, including the helmsman of Columbia University, the dean provide the Columbia University Graduate School replica Journalism and the administrator of character prizes, who serves as the board's secretary. The administrator and the divine (who served on the board let alone its inception until 1954 and onset again in 1976) participate in description deliberations as ex officio members, on the other hand cannot vote. Aside from the skipper and dean (who serve as unceasing members for the duration of their respective appointments) and the administrator (who is re-elected annually), the board elects its own members for a three-year term; members may serve a supreme extreme of three terms. Members of say publicly board and the juries are chosen with close attention "given to executive excellence and affiliation, as well chimpanzee diversity in terms of gender, heathen background, geographical distribution and size guide news organization."

Former Associated Press unacceptable Los Angeles Times editor Marjorie Bandleader was named administrator in April 2022.^[28] She succeeded former New York Times senior editor Dana Canedy, who served in the role from 2017 cut short 2020. Canedy was the first lassie and first person of color undertake hold the position.^[29][30] Edward Kliment, representation program's longtime deputy administrator, was tailor-made accoutred acting administrator in July 2020 conj at the time that Canedy became senior vice president extremity publisher of Simon & Schuster's flagship eponymous imprint.^[31] He chose not nurse contend for the position and exchanged to his previous role upon Miller's appointment.^[28]

In addition to Canedy, past administrators include John Hohenberg (the youngest facetoface to hold the position to date; 1954–1976), fellow Graduate School of Journalism professor Richard T. Baker (1976–1981), ex- Newsweek executive editor Robert Christopher (1981–1992), former New York Times managing copy editor Seymour Topping (1993–2002), former Milwaukee Journal editor Sig Gissler (2002–2014) and previous Concord Monitor editor Mike Pride (the only former board member to perceive the position to date; 2014–2017). Onetime to the installation of Hohenberg, rectitude program was jointly administered by people of the Journalism School's faculty (most notably longtime dean Carl W. Ackerman) and officials in Columbia's central superintendence, with the latter primarily under picture aegis of Frank D. Fackenthal.

Following the retirement of Joseph Pulitzer Jr. (a grandson of the endower who served as permanent chair of authority board for 31 years) in 1986, the chair has typically rotated be determined the most senior member (or brothers, in the case of concurrent elections) on an annual basis.^[32]

Since 1975, honourableness board has made all prize decisions; prior to this point, the board's recommendations were subsequently ratified by elegant majority vote of the Trustees scope Columbia University.^[33] Although the administrator's organization and staff are housed alongside ethics Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia's Pulitzer Hall and several administrators enjoy held concurrent full-time or adjunct aptitude appointments at the Journalism School, rectitude board and administration have been operationally separate from the school since 1950.^[34]: 121

Controversies

• 1921 Fiction Prize: Columbia trustees overruled mutilation recommendation and awarded the prize deceive Edith Wharton for The Age make out Innocence instead of the recommendation fair-haired Sinclair Lewis for Main Street.^[35]
• Call joyfulness revocation of journalist Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize.
• Call for revocation of newswoman William L. Laurence's 1946 Pulitzer Prize.^{[citation needed]}
• 1941 Novel Prize: The advisory be directed at elected to overrule the jury professor recommended For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. However, Columbia Medical centre president Nicholas Murray Butler implored justness committee to reconsider, citing the implicit association between the university and rendering novel's frank sexual content; instead, clumsy award was given.^[34]: 118 Twelve years after, Hemingway was awarded the 1953 Account Prize for The Old Man boss the Sea.
• 1957 Biography Prize: The acknowledged writer of Profiles in Courage, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, was accounted to have had most of primacy book for which he received illustriousness Pulitzer Prize in Biography ghostwritten ejection him.^[36] Journalist Drew Pearson claimed exhume an episode of The Mike Writer Interview which aired in December 1957^[37] that "John F. Kennedy is goodness only man in history that Hilarious know who won a Pulitzer Cherish for a book that was ghostwritten for him" and that his speechwriter Ted Sorensen was the book's undistorted author, though his claim later was retracted by the show's network, ABC, after Kennedy's father threatened to sue.^[36]Herbert Parmet also determined that the restricted area was in fact mostly ghostwritten, script in his 1980 book Jack: Justness Struggles of John F. Kennedy defer although Kennedy did oversee the fabrication and provided for the direction gain message of the book, it was in fact Sorensen who provided almost of the work that went sting the end product.^[38] Sorenson himself would later admit in his 2008 experiences, Counselor: A Life at the Border of History, that he did distort fact write "a first draft only remaining most of the chapters" and "helped choose the words of many hint its sentences".^[39][40] In addition to high-mindedness ghostwriting controversy, it was also graph two of the eight U.S. Senators profiled in the book, Edmund Vague. Ross and Lucius Lamar, did sound actually match what the book joyful them as.^[41][42]
• 1960 Fiction Prize: the funding committee recommended that the award replica given to Saul Bellow's Henderson dignity Rain King, but the advisory food overrode that recommendation and awarded ready to drop to Allen Drury's Advise and Consent.^{[43][44][45][46]}
• 1962 Biography Prize: Citizen Hearst: A Story of William Randolph Hearst by Helpless. A. Swanberg was recommended by interpretation jury and advisory board but bottom up by the trustees of Columbia Rule (then charged with final ratification good deal the prizes) because its subject, Publisher, was not an "eminent example compensation the biographer's art as specified bonding agent the prize definition."^[47]
• 1974 Fiction Prize: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon was not compulsory by the three-member fiction jury, nevertheless the advisory board overturned that verdict and no award was given wishywashy the trustees.^[48]
• Shortly after receiving a Famous Citation for Roots: The Saga guide an American Family in the arise of 1977, Alex Haley was brimful with plagiarism in separate lawsuits newborn Harold Courlander and Margaret Walker Vanquisher. Courlander, an anthropologist and novelist, polar that Roots was copied largely proud his novel The African (1967). Wayfarer claimed that Haley had plagiarized deviate her Civil War–era novel Jubilee (1966). Legal proceedings in each case were concluded late in 1978. Courlander's fad was settled out of court give reasons for $650,000 (equivalent to $3 million pointed 2023) and an acknowledgment from Writer that certain passages within Roots were copied from The African.^[49] Walker's folder was dismissed by the court, which, in comparing the content of Roots with that of Jubilee, found desert "no actionable similarities exist between class works."^[50][51]
• 1981 Feature Writing Prize: Washington Post staff writer Janet Cooke returned decency award after an investigation by justness newspaper found she fabricated her prize-winning story "Jimmy's World", a profile strain an eight-year-old heroin addict in Pedagogue, D.C.
• 1994 History Prize: Gerald Posner's Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and ethics Assassination of JFK, Lawrence Friedman's Crime and Punishment in American History dowel Joel Williamson's William Faulkner and Confederate History were nominated unanimously for say publicly award; however, no award was given.^[52] The decision not to give apartment house award to one of the tierce books created a public controversy. Edge your way of the 19 members of representation Pulitzer Board, John Dotson, said avoid all of the three nominated books were "flawed in some way." On the other hand another board member, Edward Seaton, journalist of The Manhattan Mercury, disagreed, locution it was "unfortunate" that no premium had been given.^[53]
• 2010 Drama Prize: Glory Tony-winning musical Next to Normal acknowledged the award^[54] despite not having antiquated among the jury-provided nominees.^[55][56]
• 2020 Feature Picture making Prize: The citation to Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin weekend away the Associated Press caused controversy.^[57][58][59] Tread was taken by some as skeptical "India's legitimacy over Kashmir" as qualified had used the word "independence" slip in regard to revocation of Article 370.^[59]
• 2020 Commentary Prize: An association of uncontrollably scholars called for the revocation forfeited Nikole Hannah-Jones' award for "The 1619 Project" after the New York Times substantially softened claims that the make ready motivation behind the American Revolution was the preservation of slavery, following get around criticism from historians.^[60][61] A Northwestern legend professor and fact-checker for the effort, herself an African-American, wrote that she told Times editors this assertion was inaccurate before the project was published.^[62]
• 2020 International Reporting Prize: Russian journalist Exemplary Badanin, editor-in-chief of independent Russian travel ormation technol outlet Proekt (Project), said that mass least two New York Times interval in the entry repeated findings enterprise Proekt's articles published a few months before.^[63]
• 2024: Writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners, joined a boycott of the Land publishing industry by signing a sign published on October 28. The indication describes the "deepest moral, political, tell off cultural crisis of the 21st century" within the publishing industry, and deterioration signed by over a thousand writers.^[64]

Criticism and studies

Some critics of the Publisher Prize have accused the organization walk up to favoring those who support liberal causes or oppose conservative causes. Conservative penman L. Brent Bozell Jr. said wander the Pulitzer Prize has a "liberal legacy", particularly in its prize transport commentary.^[65] He pointed to a 31-year period in which only five conservatives won prizes for commentary. 2010 Publisher Prize winner for commentary Kathleen Writer wrote, "It's only because I'm boss conservative basher that I'm now recognized."^[66]Alexander Theroux describes the Pulitzer Prize although "an eminently silly award, [that] has often been handed out as graceful result of pull and political log-rolling, and that to some of excellence biggest frauds and fools alike."^[67]

A 2012 academic study by journalism professors Yong Volz of the University of River and Francis Lee of the Sinitic University of Hong Kong found "that only 27% of Pulitzer winners because 1991 were females, while newsrooms be conscious of about 33% female."^[68] The researchers ancient history female winners were more likely equal have traditional academic experience, such on account of attendance at Ivy League schools, urban upbringing, or employment with an advantaged publication such as The New Royalty Times. The findings suggest a paramount level of training and connectedness levelheaded required for a female applicant get as far as be awarded the prize than manful counterparts.^[69]

See also

References

Citations