NYT wins four Pulitzers

Florida's Sun Sentinel bags Pulitzer for public service; Pulitzer in breaking news photography goes to AP

The New York Times has won four Pulitzer prizes, including the award for investigative reporting for stories that detailed how Walmart used bribery to expand in Mexico.

The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was yesterday awarded the public service Pulitzer for its reporting on off-duty police officers' reckless driving.

The Pulitzer in breaking news photography went to The Associated Press for its coverage of the civil war in Syria. AP Director of Photography Santiago Lyon called the winners — Rodrigo Abd, Manu Brabo, Narciso Contreras, Khalil Hamra and Muhammed Muheisen — "some of the bravest and most talented photographers in the world."

A New York-based online nonprofit news organisation that covers energy, InsideClimate News, won the Pulitzer in national reporting for stories on flawed regulation of the nation's oil pipelines.

The Pulitzers, journalism's highest honour, are given out each year by Columbia University on the recommendation of a board of journalists and others. Each award carries a $10,000 prize except for the public service award, which is a gold medal.

NYT, which has won more Pulitzers than any other news organisation, was also honoured for international reporting for detailing the wealth of relatives of top officials in China's communist party; for explanatory reporting, for a look at the business practices of Apple and other technology companies; and for feature writing, for an account of skiers killed in an avalanche in Washington state.

The Pulitzer in breaking news reporting went to The Denver Post for its coverage of the shooting at a movie theatre last summer in Aurora, Colorado, that left 12 people dead.

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis captured two Pulitzers: It was honoured in the local reporting category for its coverage of a spike in infant deaths in poorly regulated day care centers, and Steve Sack won for editorial cartooning.

The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens won the prize for commentary with his columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics.     In the criticism category, Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post was honoured for his essays on art.     The prize for editorial writing went to Tim Nickens and Dan Ruth of the Tampa Bay Times of St. Petersburg, Florida, for a campaign that helped continue fluoridation of the drinking water for the county's 700,000 people.     Tampa Bay Times Editor Neil Brown said that they composed "clear and forceful editorials."     

"Tim Nickens and Dan Ruth went to bat for hundreds of thousands of people, many of them poor, who were being deprived a chance at better health," Brown said in a statement. "If we don't do this work, if the Times doesn't speak up, who will?"     Javier Manzano, a freelance photographer, won the feature photography prize for a picture distributed by Agence France-Presse of two Syrian rebel soldiers.