The prizes, which are administered by Columbia University, went to a variety of newspapers and were not concentrated in the hands of one or two publications, as has been the case in recent years.
And for the first time, a prize was awarded to reporting that did not appear in print: ProPublica’s series “The Wall Street Money Machine,” which won for national reporting.
The awards this year included other notable firsts. The Wall Street Journal won its only Pulitzer since Rupert Murdoch bought the paper in 2007. Joseph Rago won for his editorials on President Obama’s health care reform legislation. The Journal last won in 2007, when it received the awards for international reporting and public service.
Carol Guzy, a photographer from The Washington Post, became the first journalist to win four Pulitzer prizes. Ms. Guzy shared the award for breaking news photography with Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti, who were cited for their depiction of the devastation in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.
Pulitzers were awarded in 13 journalism categories and 7 arts categories.
The prize for fiction went to Jennifer Egan for “A Visit From The Goon Squad.” Bruce Norris won the award for drama for his play “Clybourne Park.” The history prize went to Eric Foner for “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.” Ron Chernow won in the biography category for “Washington: A Life.” “Madame White Snake” by Zhou Long won for music.
Kay Ryan took the prize for poetry for “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems.” The award for general nonfiction was awarded to Siddhartha Mukherjee for “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
In the journalism categories, the committee did not award a prize for breaking news, though it cited as finalists four newspapers: The Chicago Tribune, The Tennessean and The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, which were considered a joint entry for their coverage of the earthquake in Haiti.
In the public service category, The Los Angeles Times won for its coverage of city officials in Bell, Calif., who awarded themselves enormous pay packages. The articles made the city of Bell infamous and tapped into the anti-government ferment that hit its height last summer.
David Leonhardt of The New York Times won in the commentary category for what the committee said was “his graceful penetration of America’s complicated economic question.” The Times’s Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry won the prize for international reporting for “their dogged reporting that put a human face on the faltering justice system in Russia, remarkably influencing the discussion inside the country.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 18, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction as Eagan.
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