Pulitzer Prize

What is honored

Of the 23 Pulitzer Prizes awarded, roughly two-thirds of them are in the craft of journalism. Those categories have changed over time but have traditionally recognized excellence in national, local, international, and investigative reporting as well as breaking news, explanatory journalism, feature writing, criticism, editorial/commentary writing, news and feature photography, editorial cartooning, and, more recently, audio reporting. Each of those prizes comes with a $15,000 award as of 2026.

The most coveted of all the prizes, however, is what is known as the public service award. Awarded to a news organization and not to individual reporters or writers, the prize comes with a gold medal. (It’s actually a silver medal that’s plated in 24-karat gold.) A sampling of notable public service award recipients over the years includes:

• 1921: The Boston Post for exposing Charles Ponzi’s schemes, leading to his arrest.
• 1922: The New York World for a series of articles exposing the operations of the Ku Klux Klan.
• 1937: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch for reporting that uncovered fraudulent voter registration in St. Louis.
• 1950: The Chicago Daily News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for uncovering the presence of 37 journalists on the Illinois state payroll.
• 1958: The Arkansas Gazette for its coverage of historic school integration.
• 1963: The Chicago Daily News for reporting on the lack of birth control services in public health programs.
• 1965: The Hutchinson (Kansas) News for reporting that led to more equitable reapportionment of the Kansas state legislature.
• 1972: The New York Times for its publication of the Pentagon Papers.
• 1973: The Washington Post for its investigation of Watergate.
• 1985: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporting on design flaws in Huey helicopters that led to the deaths of some 250 U.S. service members.
• 1993: The Miami Herald for its coverage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew.
• 2002: The New York Times for its coverage of the terrorist attacks of September 11.
• 2003: The Boston Globe for its investigation of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
• 2021: The New York Times for its coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 2022: The Washington Post for its coverage of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

How are winners chosen

The prizes are awarded each spring after a rigorous judging process overseen by members of the Pulitzer Prize Board. The board is made up of current and former journalists, writers, and academics. Some who serve on the board are former winners themselves. Board members serve three-year terms and are limited to serving three terms.

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News organizations, including newspapers, magazines, and online publications, can submit entries in any or all of the categories. Some 80 appointed jurors are divided into groups of five or seven to review entries in a given category. Each year, roughly 1,100 entries are submitted; jurors select three finalists in each category. Then the entirety of the Pulitzer Prize Board votes to select the winners. The process is highly confidential but has some well-accepted guardrails, including that no juror or board member can pass judgment on work created by their news organization to avoid conflicts of interest.

The prizes are awarded each spring, and the winners are a carefully guarded secret until they are announced at 3:00 pm Eastern Time on the designated awards day. In many newsrooms, work stops as the rolling announcement of the awards is made. Sometimes, winners are given a day or two advance notice of a win to allow for family members to gather for the announcement.

In 2019, Carlos Lozada, then the book critic for The Washington Post, remembers Marty Baron, the paper’s executive editor, coming to his office, closing the door, and saying simply: “Congratulations. You’ve won a Pulitzer Prize.” Lozada’s stunned response: “Why?” The answer comes in the form of the citation on Lozada’s award:

For trenchant and searching reviews and essays that joined warm emotion and careful analysis in examining a broad range of books addressing government and the American experience.

Lozada, who is now a columnist at The New York Times, serves on the Pulitzer Board and is governed by its confidentiality requirements, but talked generally about the selection process in a 2026 interview with Britannica: “It’s a straight majority vote. People might win 11–4 or they might win 8–7.…Often I go in thinking, it’s definitely going to be x, and then I’m turned around.…People make really good points, and it’s exciting when that happens.”

Lozada says that the discussions are largely collegial but can get contentious at times. Ultimately, however, at the heart of the decision is a desire to honor the very best work:

People are bringing all sorts of different lenses to it, but they really just want to be rewarding excellence. All you can do is look for the most valuable, significant, well-done work.

Controversies and criticism

A look at past Pulitzer winners reveals the essential role of journalism as watchdog, and the Pulitzers have a storied tradition of recognizing exceptional work, not just from journalistic giants such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, but also from alternative weeklies, dailies in small municipalities, nonprofit news organizations, and online-only specialty publications.

That is not to say, however, that the Pulitzer judges haven’t made mistakes or faced criticism for their decisions. Perhaps the biggest stain on the reputation of the prizes is also one of the biggest stains in the history of The Washington Post. On April 13, 1981, Post reporter Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer for her work recounting the life of an eight-year-old addicted to heroin. The article, headlined “Jimmy’s World,” won in the feature writing category, but two days later The Post acknowledged that Jimmy had been made up by Cooke, and the paper returned the prize. Pulitzer board member Osborn Elliott, then dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, told Time magazine at the time: “It was a very dramatic telling and a moving piece. I figured that the Post had verified it.”

The Pulitzers have also faced criticism for being too traditional and having a bias toward large, established newsrooms (as of 2026, The New York Times had won 148 prizes, more than any other news organization), for being too liberal (Pres. Donald Trump is suing the board over 2018 prizes awarded to The Times and The Post), and for not having a racially or ethnically diverse board. The Pulitzers have reiterated a commitment to having diversity on its selection committee and among its award winners. Instituting term limits on board members was an attempt to increase diversity.

Adapting for 21st-century journalism

It’s fair to say that the current journalism world would be unrecognizable to Joseph Pulitzer, an eventuality that he at least partly foresaw. In creating the prizes, he allowed for modification, writing that he gave the board:

“Power in its discretion to suspend or to change any subject or subjects; substituting, however, others in their places, if in the judgment of the board such suspension, changes or substitutions shall be conducive to the public good or rendered advisable by public necessities, or by reason of change of time.”

As such the prizes have morphed to recognize the increasingly digital landscape of modern journalism, specifically:

• 1999: Began accepting online content for the Public Service Prize
• 2006: Began accepting online content for all categories
• 2009: Began accepting submissions from online-only news organizations
• 2016: Began accepting submissions from online and print magazines
• 2020: Awarded first Pulitzer Prize for audio

The Board also has a history of awarding special citations for exemplary journalism that does not fit into existing categories. Recent recipients include:

• 2019: The journalists of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, “For their courageous response to the largest killing of journalists in U.S. history in their newsroom on June 28, 2018, and for demonstrating unflagging commitment to covering the news and serving their community at a time of unspeakable grief.”
• 2020: Posthumously, groundbreaking early 20th-century journalist Ida B. Wells for her “courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.”
• 2021: Bystander Darnella Frazier “for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”
• 2022: The journalists of Ukraine “for their courage, endurance, and commitment to truthful reporting during Vladimir Putin’s ruthless invasion of their country and his propaganda war in Russia.”
• 2026: Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown whose reporting in 2017 and 2018 on Jeffrey Epstein continues “to reverberate around the world.”