Pulitzer Prize: ‘Daily News’, ‘ProPublica’ win public service award, ‘NYT’ leads with 3

Daily News and ProPublica garnered the coveted public service Pulitzer Prize for uncovering abuse of eviction rules that drove many minority families from their homes

The New York Daily News and ProPublica garnered the coveted Pulitzer Prize for public service for uncovering abuse of eviction rules by police that drove many poor minority families from their homes.

The New York Times led all news outlets with three Pulitzers for international reporting, feature writing and breaking news photography. For national reporting, David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Donald Trump campaign. For investigative reporting, Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail in Charleston, West Virginia, was awarded for exposing a local opioid crisis.

In the Trump era, big newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post are building vital digital businesses to fend off challenges from tech platforms like Facebook and Google that are taking advertising sales from newspapers globally. The president has railed against both news outlets, accusing them of unfair news coverage of him. But those criticisms, often in the form of early-morning tweets, amount to free advertising and have helped feed the online subscription surge.

At the same time, local papers like the Charleston Gazette-Mail continue to struggle, putting at risk valuable local investigative reporting like Eric Eyre’s prize-winning work.

For breaking news, the staff of the East Bay Times in Oakland, California, won for its coverage of the “Ghost Ship” fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party, and the city’s failure to take actions that might have prevented it.

The Salt Lake Tribune staff earned the local reporting prize for revealing the “perverse, punitive and cruel treatment” given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah’s most powerful institutions.

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced the 101st annual Pulitzer Prizes Monday in New York. A board of editors, publishers, writers and educators voted on 21 categories of journalism, letters, drama, poetry and music. Winners in all categories except public service receive $15,000. The public-service prize, awarded to an American news organization, is a gold medal.

In recent years, the board has expanded eligibility for five categories—investigative reporting, feature writing, international reporting, criticism and editorial cartooning—to include many online and print magazines that publish at least weekly. The board also changed its rules on partnerships, letting news organizations nominate journalists who work at partnering outlets even if those groups aren’t eligible to compete.