Washington Post Wins 6 Pulitzers, Including Public Service Award

By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – The Washington Post won six Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including the public service medal for exposing shoddy treatment of America’s war wounded at Walter Reed hospital, and the breaking-news award for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre.

The New York Times received two Pulitzers: one for investigative reporting, for stories on toxic ingredients in medicine and other products imported from China, and one for explanatory reporting, for examining the ethical issues surrounding DNA testing.

The Post’s other awards were for:

– National reporting, for its exploration of Vice President Cheney’s backstage influence

– International reporting, for a series on how private security contractors in Iraq operate outside the laws governing U.S. forces

– Feature writing, for Gene Weingarten’s story on world-class violinist Joshua Bell, who, in an experiment, played beautiful music in a subway station to gauge commuters’ reaction

– Commentary, for Steven Pearlstein’s columns on the nation’s economic problems.

The Chicago Tribune also won in the investigative reporting category, for stories exposing faulty government regulation that resulted in recalls of car seats, toys and cribs.

Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily won in the editorial cartooning category.

The prize for breaking news photography went to Adrees Latif of Reuters for his photograph of a Japanese videographer who was fatally wounded in a street protest in Myanmar.

Preston Gannaway of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire was honored in the feature photography category for a series of pictures chronicling a family coping with a parent’s terminal illness.

No prizes were awarded this year in editorial writing.

The Pulitzers are journalism’s highest honor, and the public service award is the most distinguished of all. The awards are given by Columbia University on the recommendation of the 18-member Pulitzer board.

The Pulitzers were created under the terms of the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who died in 1911. The first awards were handed out in 1917.

The awards carry a prize of $10,000, except for the public service award, in which a gold medal is awarded to the newspaper.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)