2016 Pulitzer Prize: Winners and their works

‘Associated Press’ won the prestigious award for public service, ‘Los Angeles Times’ staff for breaking news reporting

The 2016 Pulitzer Prizes, which are in their centennial year, were announced on Monday.

The Associated Press won the prestigious award for public service for its series on the plight of trafficked migrants and slaves from Myanmar, and the “severe labour abuses” in the Southeast Asian seafood trade. The seafood from Southeast Asia often ends up in American supermarkets like Wal-Mart and Albertsons.

The AP’s continued reportage on the slave trade led to the freeing of 2,000 slaves last year, while also bringing perpetrators to justice and inspiring reforms in both the US and elsewhere. AP first reported on the story in March 2015, and the series concluded in December 2015.

Here’s a complete list of winners and their works (words in bracket from Pulitzer Prize website)

Journalism:

Public Service — Associated Press (For an investigation of severe labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and inspired reforms.)

Breaking News Reporting — Los Angeles Times staff (For exceptional reporting, including both local and global perspectives, on the shooting in San Bernardino and the terror investigation that followed.)

Investigative Reporting — Leonora LaPeter Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (For a stellar example of collaborative reporting by two news organizations that revealed escalating violence and neglect in Florida mental hospitals and laid the blame at the door of state officials.) Read story here.

Local Reporting — Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick and Lisa Gartner of the Tampa Bay Times (For exposing a local school board’s culpability in turning some county schools into failure factories, with tragic consequences for the community.) Read series here.

National Reporting — The Washington Post staff. (For its revelatory initiative in creating and using a national database to illustrate how often and why the police shoot to kill and who the victims are most likely to be.)

Explanatory Reporting — T. Christian Miller of ProPublicaand Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project (For a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement’s enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims.) Read story here.

International Reporting — Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times (For thoroughly reported and movingly written accounts giving voice to Afghan women who were forced to endure unspeakable cruelties.)

Feature Writing — Kathryn Schulz of The New Yorker (For an elegant scientific narrative of the rupturing of the Cascadia fault line, a masterwork of environmental reporting and writing). Read story here.

Commentary — Farah Stockman of The Boston Globe (For extensively reported columns that probe the legacy of busing in Boston and its effect on education in the city with a clear eye on ongoing racial contradictions.)

Criticism — Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker (For television reviews written with an affection that never blunts the shrewdness of her analysis or the easy authority of her writing.)

Editorial Writing — John Hackworth of Sun Newspapers, Charlotte Harbor, FL (For fierce, indignant editorials that demanded truth and change after the deadly assault of an inmate by corrections officers.)

Editorial Cartooning — Jack Ohman of The Sacramento Bee(For cartoons that convey wry, rueful perspectives through a sophisticated style that combines bold line work with subtle colors and textures.)

Breaking News Photography — Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter of The New York Times (For photographs that captured the resolve of refugees, the perils of their journeys and the struggle of host countries to take them in.) and photography staff ofThomson Reuters (For gripping photographs, each with its own voice, that follow migrant refugees hundreds of miles across uncertain boundaries to unknown destinations.)

Feature Photography — Jessica Rinaldi of The Boston Globe (For the raw and revealing photographic story of a boy who strives to find his footing after abuse by those he trusted.)

Letters, drama and music:

Fiction — The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)

Drama — Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda

History — Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf)

Biography — Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (Penguin Press)

Poetry — Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian (University of Chicago Press)

Nonfiction — Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick (Doubleday)

Music — In for a Penny, In for a Pound by Henry Threadgill (Pi Recordings).