Digital media takes home a Pulitzer
Columbia University announced the journalism and arts winners of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, and The Huffington Post landed one for national reporting.
Print Email Reprints CommentThe Huffington Post—and digital media—has won its first Pulitzer Prize. The award went to David Wood, in the category of national reporting, it was announced Monday by Columbia University, which administers the prizes.
A longtime print journalist who did stints at Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Wood was praised for his “riveting exploration of the physical and emotional challenges facing American soldiers severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan during a decade of war.”
The award was a breakthrough for The Huffington Post, and for AOL, which acquired the massive news site last year as part of a risky, if not desperate attempt to turn itself into a major player in the content business.
The Huffington Post is the first commercially run, native digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer, which is generally considered the highest honor in journalism.
“It's a big breakthrough,” said Dean Starkman, an editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, which has no connection to the prizes. Noting that the nonprofit investigative news site ProPublica.org won Pulitzers in 2010 and 2011, he added that it made a difference that the Huffington Post has had to manage as a business.
“They did quality work while earning their daily bread,” he said.
Politico, a web publication with a print component, also won its first Pulitzer, for the political cartoons of Matt Wuerker. The Pulitzer committee described them as "especially memorable for lampooning the partisan conflict that engulfed Washington."
Here is a list of the 2012 Pulitzer winners in journalism and arts:
Journalism
Public service: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Breaking news reporting: The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News staff
Investigative reporting: Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of The Associated Press, and Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of The Seattle Times
Explanatory reporting: David Kocieniewski of The New York Times
Local reporting: Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff, Harrisburg, Pa.
National reporting: David Wood of The Huffington Post
International reporting: Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times
Feature writing: Eli Sanders of The Stranger, a Seattle weekly
Commentary: Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune
Criticism: Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe
Editorial writing: No award
Editorial cartooning: Matt Wuerker of Politico
Breaking news photography: Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse
Feature photography: Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post
Arts
Fiction: No award
Drama: Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes
History: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by the late Manning Marable (Viking)
Biography: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (The Penguin Press)
Poetry: "Life on Mars" by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press)
General nonfiction: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton and Co.)
Music: Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts by Kevin Puts, commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Opera in Minneapolis on Nov. 12, 2011
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Correction: Nonprofit investigation site ProPublic.org has won the Pulitzer Prize twice. That fact was misstated in a previous version of this story, published online April 16, 2012.
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