AP, Washington Post, Reuters and Minnesota Star Tribune among Pulitzer winners for 2025 work (AP)
AP, Washington Post, Reuters and Minnesota Star Tribune among Pulitzer winners for 2025 work The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for scrutinizing the Trump administration’s sweeping, choppy cuts and changes to federal agencies Eds: MAJOR UPDATE: With more about Post’s award for public service, quote from Times executive editor, quote from Bloomberg editor-in-chief; trims.
The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for scrutinizing the Trump administration’s sweeping, choppy cuts and changes to federal agencies. The Associated Press won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for an investigation into mass surveillance tools and their impact in China. Reuters won the award Monday for reporting on U.S. President Donald Trump’s use of executive power. Spanning three years, thousands of pages of documents and numerous interviews, the AP project found that American companies help lay the foundations of the Chinese government’s system for monitoring and policing its citizens. Reuters’ work looked at how Trump has used the federal government to expand presidential authority and to try to punish his foes.
‘Sweeping and deeply impactful reporting
Visual journalism honors included a graphic novel A ‘pioneering’ live podcast investigation NEW YORK (AP) – The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for scrutinizing the Trump administration’s sweeping, choppy overhaul of federal agencies, and The Associated Press won the award Monday for international reporting about surveillance.
In a year when several prize-winning projects zoomed in on the Trump presidency, the Post’s coverage illuminated the fast-moving, sometimes opaque particulars of the administration’s drive to reshape the national government and what the cuts and changes meant for individual Americans.
The Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown was given a special citation for her reporting, nearly a decade ago, that drew attention to Jeffrey Epstein ‘s abuses. The New York Times won three of the coveted prizes, the Post and Reuters each won two, and smaller outlets ranging from The Connecticut Mirror to the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” also were recognized in a challenging year for American journalism. “This is always a day of celebration in our communities, but perhaps never more so than today as we face tremendous political and economic pressures,” prize administrator Marjorie Miller said in a livestream announcing the awards.
In the last few months, the Post cut a third of its staff, CBS News announced it would shutter its nearly century-old radio service , The AP offered buyouts to over 120 journalists and some regional newspapers also publicly struggled. CBS parent Paramount’s acquisition of CNN has raised questions about what’s next for those networks. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to bash, and sometimes sue, outlets whose coverage he finds objectionable.
Spanning three years, thousands of pages of documents and numerous interviews, the AP project found that American companies help lay the foundations of the Chinese government’s system for monitoring and policing its citizens.
“This was sweeping and deeply impactful reporting, the kind of work that highlights the unique strengths of AP’s global, multiformat newsroom,” executive editor Julie Pace said in an email to staffers. She is among the Pulitzer Board’s new members . Some of The Washington Post’s winning work was by reporter Hannah Natanson, whose home was searched and devices were seized in what federal authorities say was an investigation into a Pentagon contractor’s handling of classified documents but the Post says was a violation of the First Amendment.
Two winning entries focused on Trump’s pulverizing approach to norms and constraints. Reuters, which won for national reporting, looked at how Trump has used the federal government and his supporters’ influence to expand presidential authority and target foes, the award judges noted. The Times took the investigative reporting prize for exploring the Republican president’s boundary-pushing approach to the notion of conflicts of interest.
Joseph Kahn, executive editor of the Times, said its reporters have been threatened over their work. “We have not, and will not” bow to the pressure, he said in a statement.
Reuters’ reporting on scam ads, AI chatbots and the social media giant Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – won the newly revived prize for beat reporting. The award, for journalists consistently assigned to a particular topic, was last given two decades ago.
Reuters’ wins spotlighted “fearless, deeply reported, original work that holds powerful institutions to account,” editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement.
The prize for breaking news went to The Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage of last year’s deadly mass shooting during Mass at a Minneapolis Catholic school . Judges praised the thoroughness and compassion of the newspaper’s reporting on a scene of carnage in its hometown. “To me, it’s really a moment to appreciate the power of local journalism,” Kathleen Hennessey, the Star Tribune’s editor and senior vice president, said in an interview. One Tribune reporter who lives in the neighborhood heard the gunshots and called 911 before running to the scene, she noted; an editor at the paper has children who attend the school.
“It feels really gratifying to be recognized, but for this newsroom, this is also just still a really painful event,” Hennessey said.
The San Francisco Chronicle received the award for explanatory reporting, which means work that makes a complex topic comprehensible to everyday readers and viewers. The Chronicle’s series laid out how insurers, aided by algorithmic tools, undervalued and denied rebuilding claims for fire-destroyed homes, the judges said.
In visual journalism, The Times got a breaking news photography award for depicting devastation and starvation in Gaza resulting from Israel’s war in the territory. The Post won the feature photography prize, for a visual essay on a family welcoming a firstborn as the child’s father grappled with terminal cancer. The award for illustrated reporting and commentary – a category that includes editorial cartoons and more – went to Bloomberg for a graphic novel about online scams that threaten “digital arrest.”
In a statement, Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait called it “deeply reported public service journalism, published in an inventive format.
While several prizes reflected the year’s biggest news stories, others highlighted work that wasn’t pushed to everyone’s phones.
One of two local reporting awards went to The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica for a series on how towing companies profited off Connecticut laws, at the expense of poor car owners; the state soon changed the laws. The Chicago Tribune also was honored for its coverage of the Trump administration’s intense immigration crackdown in the Windy City.
Texas Monthly won the feature writing award for an editor’s first-person story of flooding that killed his toddler nephew and swept his home away. Also in Texas, The Dallas Morning News’ architecture critic won the criticism award; judges praised Mark Lamster’s wit and expertise. The New York Times’ M. Gessen won the opinion writing award for essays on authoritarianism.
The audio award went to “Pablo Torre Finds Out” for probing financial arrangements between Los Angeles Clippers superstar Kawhi Leonard and an environmental startup in which the team owner invested. The judges called the project a “pioneering and entertaining form of live podcast journalism.” The Pulitzer announcement – usually followed by a dinner later in the year – came little more than a week after an armed man rushed a security checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with Secret Service agents outside another big event for U.S. journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. The man is now charged with trying to assassinate Trump , who was attending the event for his first time as president. Separately, Monday’s awards also honored books, music and theater .
The prizes were established in newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer’s will and were first awarded in 1917. Winners receive $15,000, and the public service award carries a gold medal. Decisions are made by the Pulitzer Board, based at Columbia University in New York.
Associated Press global investigation into government surveillance efforts wins Pulitzer Prize
Associated Press global investigation into government surveillance efforts wins Pulitzer Prize The Associated Press has won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for stories on the expansion of government surveillance efforts in China and the role that U.S. tech firms played in it Eds: UPDATES: Adds names of editors.
The Associated Press has won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for stories on the expansion of government surveillance efforts in China and the role that U.S. tech firms played in it. The Pulitzer board recognized AP staffers Dake Kang, Garance Burke, Byron Tau and Aniruddha Ghosal, along with contributor and independent journalist Yael Grauer for what it called “an astonishing global investigation into state-of-the-art tools of mass surveillance.” Also included was a story about the expansion of license plate surveillance of drivers in the United States.
NEW YORK (AP) – The expansion of government surveillance efforts in China – and the role that U.S. tech firms played in it – was the foundation of investigative stories from The Associated Press that won a Pulitzer Prize Monday for international reporting.
The Pulitzer board recognized AP journalists Dake Kang, Garance Burke, Byron Tau and Aniruddha Ghosal, along with contributor and independent journalist Yael Grauer, for what it called “an astonishing global investigation into state-of-the-art tools of mass surveillance” that also included a story about the expansion of license plate surveillance of drivers in United States by the U.S. Border Patrol.
AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Julie Pace said “this complex and difficult reporting, done by journalists across several continents, embodies the true spirit of the AP: leveraging our global footprint and deep expertise to tell important, impactful stories. It comes at a critical time when the immense and growing power of U.S. tech companies – and their increasingly complex relationship with governments – is in the spotlight and of immense public interest.”
The AP’s investigation spanned three years, thousands of pages of documents and numerous interviews. It found that the foundations of the system used by the Chinese government to monitor and police its citizens over recent decades was laid down with the help of American companies. Some of the companies went so far as to use their tech’s surveillance capabilities as a selling point. “This was sweeping and deeply impactful reporting, the kind of work that highlights the unique strengths of AP’s global, multiformat newsroom,” Pace said in an email to staffers. She is among the Pulitzer Board’s new members .
Other stories included a look at how across presidential administrations, the U.S. government allowed tech companies and China to skirt regulations intended to bar that country from access to certain materials like advanced computer chips.
A piece looking at surveillance in the United States found that the Border Patrol was secretively using an intelligence program that used license plate information to track drivers’ travel patterns, and not just for border crossings. Drivers whose patterns were deemed suspicious by an algorithm could then find themselves stopped and even arrested.
The AP highlighted the difficulty of undertaking the project, and said in its statement that journalists dealt with harassment and off-the-record pushes to keep the project from publishing.
The visually compelling project included multiple photographic and video elements, with notable contributions from AP photographer David Goldman and visual journalists Marshall Ritzel and Serginho Roosblad.
Other contributors included Michael Biesecker and Sam Mednick on a story that focused on how U.S. tech giants quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services. And it fueled fears that these tools contributed to the deaths of innocent people.
Global investigations editors Mary Rajkumar and Jeannie Ohm led and edited the “Made in America, Watched Worldwide” project. Investigative editor Tom Berman also contributed.
