• The New York Times and New Yorker magazine won Pulitzer Prize 2025 largely in recognition of their coverage of overseas wars. 

• The New York Times won four and The New Yorker won three awards. 

• The Pulitzers’ prestigious public service medal went to ProPublica for the second straight year. 

• Reuters won the award in investigative reporting.

• The Washington Post won for urgent and illuminating breaking news coverage of the Trump assassination attempt. 

• Percival Everett’s novel ‘James’, his re-imagining of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ from the perspective of the enslaved title character, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

• The Pulitzers honoured the best in journalism from 2024 in 15 categories, along with eight arts categories including books, music and theater. The public service winner receives a gold medal. All other winners receive $15,000.

Pulitzer Prize

• The Pulitzer Prizes were established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912 and to establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917.

• The 18-member Pulitzer Board is composed mainly of leading journalists or news executives from media outlets across the US, as well as five academics or persons in the arts. The dean of Columbia Journalism School and the administrator of the Prizes are non-voting members. The chair rotates annually to the most senior member or members. 

• The yearlong process begins with the appointment of distinguished jurors who make three recommendations in each category. 

• The Board makes the final decisions after evaluating all the finalists nominated by the juries and considering jury reports. Prizes are awarded by majority vote of the Board.

• The Gold Medal is awarded each year to the American news organisation that wins the Public Service Prize.

Some of the winners this year are:

Public Service

ProPublica - For urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz About pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague “life of the mother” exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.

Breaking News Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post - For urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13 attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including detailed story-telling and sharp analysis that coupled traditional police reporting with audio and visual forensics.

Investigative Reporting

Staff of Reuters - For a boldly reported expose of lax regulation in the US and abroad that makes fentanyl, one of the world’s deadliest drugs, inexpensive and widely available to users in the United States.

National Reporting

Staff of The Wall Street Journal - For chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Books, Drama & Music

Fiction

‘James’, by Percival Everett - An accomplished reconsideration of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.

Drama

‘Purpose’, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins - A play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.

History

‘Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War’, by Edda L. Fields-Black - A richly-textured and revelatory account of a slave rebellion that brought 756 enslaved people to freedom in a single day, weaving military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom.

‘Native Nations: A Millennium in North America’, by Kathleen DuVal - A panoramic portrait of Native American nations and communities over a thousand years, a vivid and accessible account of their endurance, ingenuity and achievement in the face of conflict and dispossession.

Biography

‘Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life’, by Jason Roberts - A beautifully written double biography of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis de Buffon, 18th century  contemporaries who devoted their lives to identifying and describing nature’s secrets, and who continue to influence how we understand the world.

Memoir or Autobiography

‘Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir’, by Tessa Hulls - An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.

Poetry

‘New and Selected Poems’, by Marie Howe - A collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness.

General Non-fiction

‘To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement’, by Benjamin Nathans - A prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights.

Music

‘Sky Islands’, by Susie Ibarra - Premiered on July 18, 2024 at the Asia Society, New York, a work about ecosystems and biodiversity, that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisational skills of a soloist as a creative tool.

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