2020 Pulitzer Prize winners announced

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced on Monday in 15 Journalism categories and seven Book, Drama and Music categories, which included coverages of sexual violence in Alaska, anti-China protests in Hong Kong, and crashes of Boeing jets. The Pulitzer ceremony was initially scheduled for April 20 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dana Canedy, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, announced this year’s winners on Monday (local time) from her living room.

The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded the public service award, the most prestigious Pulitzer award, to the Anchorage Daily News and New York-based nonprofit outlet ProPublica. The two outlets shed light on sex violence in Alaska, which had limited access to law enforcement and was disproportionately populated by Native Alaskans. They particularly stressed that some rural areas in Alaska had more sex offenders than any other areas in the U.S. The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize in public service.

The New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for its report into the New York taxi industry, where drivers had to pay a high premium up to 1 million dollars to get a taxi license. The coverage highlighted taxi drivers, who were in overwhelming debt or who took their own lives due to competition from ride-hailing services including Uber.

Reuters has been awarded the Breaking News Photography Prize for its photographs of anti-China protesters in Hong Kong and The Associated Press won the Feature Photography Prize for capturing images of Kashmir, disputed territory between Pakistan and India. In particular, a photograph of a Kashmiri girl, whose eye was hit by a marble ball shot by Indian soldiers, shocked people. The photographers won the honor after a hard work of hiding their cameras in vegetable bags and asking travelers to carry the photo files out.

The Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Hungarian-born newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer and the Columbia School of Journalism was founded by Pulitzer’s philanthropic bequest. “During this season of unprecedented uncertainty, one thing we know for sure is that journalism never stops,” said Canedy.


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