The winners of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize were announced on Monday. No prize was awarded for breaking news reporting—marking the first time no award was given in that prestigious category. Another first came in the national reporting category. Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica received an award for their series “Wall Street Money Machine,” the first Pulitzer handed out for a group of stories that appeared online but never in print.
No news outlet dominated awards this year. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times tied for the most prizes with just two each.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal won its first award since Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought it. Managing Editor Robert Thomson seemed to be preparing to be shut out yet again when, earlier Monday, he sent out a memo entitled “The Greatest Prize,” which asked the paper’s staff to “consider the profound impact of our enterprise journalism in the past year” and didn’t mention the Pulitzer. It was the Journal's editorial page, and not its news team, that took home the prize this year and ended the paper's drought.
Journalism
- PUBLIC SERVICE - Los Angeles Times
- BREAKING NEWS REPORTING - No Award
- INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING - Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
- EXPLANATORY REPORTING - Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar, and Alison Sherwood of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- LOCAL REPORTING - Frank Main, Mark Konkol, and John J. Kim of the Chicago Sun-Times
- NATIONAL REPORTING - Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica
- INTERNATIONAL REPORTING - Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of The New York Times
- FEATURE WRITING - Amy Ellis Nutt of The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.
- COMMENTARY - David Leonhardt of The New York Times
- CRITICISM - Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe
- EDITORIAL WRITING - Joseph Rago of The Wall Street Journal
- EDITORIAL CARTOONING - Mike Keefe of The Denver Post
- BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY - Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn, and Ricky Carioti of The Washington Post
- FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY - Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times
Letters, Drama and Music
- FICTION - A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A. Knopf)
- DRAMA - Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
- HISTORY - The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (W. W. Norton & Company)
- BIOGRAPHY - Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (The Penguin Press)
- POETRY - The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)
- GENERAL NONFICTION - The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)
- MUSIC - Madame White Snake by Zhou Long, premiered on February 26, 2010 by the Boston Opera at the Cutler Majestic Theatre