Finding the Pulitzer Prize Winners for Journalism at the Library
The recipients of the 2016 Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week. While the Pulitzer website includes the winning work for each recipient, you may be interested in reading more from these journalists and their publications. The New York Public Library has the online resources to support your curiosity! Explore the links below, which are accessible from anywhere, to anyone with a library card.
The following partial list of prize winners and the descriptions of their work are from the Pulitzer website. Please visit this site for the full list, portfolios of winning work, and runners-up.
Public Service
Associated Press: "For an investigation of severe labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and inspired reforms."
Search for content related to this story in our AP Images database. You can search their images, text archive, audio, or print graphics.
Breaking News Reporting
Los Angeles Times Staff: "For exceptional reporting, including both local and global perspectives, on the shooting in San Bernardino and the terror investigation that followed."
Explore the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the San Bernardino shooting and its aftermath here. You can also read the Los Angeles Times from its earliest 1881 issues to 1988 in our historical database. Newer issues are available here, and you can flip through the past three months' worth in full color using PressReader.
Investigative Reporting
Leonora LaPeter Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: "For a stellar example of collaborative reporting by two news organizations that revealed escalating violence and neglect in Florida mental hospitals and laid the blame at the door of state officials."
Read Anton and Cormier's other Tampa Bay Times articles here.
Explanatory Reporting
T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project: "For a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims."
Read coverage of ProPublica's other investigations on their website. The Marshall Project has a page compiling their best work of 2015.
Local Reporting
Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick and Lisa Gartner ofTampa Bay Times: "For exposing a local school board's culpability in turning some county schools into failure factories, with tragic consequences for the community."
Find other reportage from LaForgia, Fitzpatrick, and Gartner in the Tampa Bay Times here.
National Reporting
The Washington Post Staff: "For its revelatory initiative in creating and using a national database to illustrate how often and why the police shoot to kill and who the victims are most likely to be."
Read the Washington Post from 1988 to the present here, or narrow your search to content on their database of police shootings. We also have a database of historical issues from its beginnings in 1877 up to 1997.
International Reporting
Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times: "For thoroughly reported and movingly written accounts giving voice to Afghan women who were forced to endure unspeakable cruelties."
Read Rubin's pieces in the New York Times (1980-present) database. We also have a historical database containing New York Times issues from its earliest in 1851 up to 2012, which is available while onsite at any library location.
Feature Writing
Kathryn Schulz of The New Yorker: "For an elegant scientific narrative of the rupturing of the Cascadia fault line, a masterwork of environmental reporting and writing."
Read Schulz's piece, "The Really Big One," along with its images, in our New Yorker Digital Archive here. While you're at it, you can explore any and all issues of the New Yorker, in a full-color, page-turning viewer, in this database as well.
Commentary
Farah Stockman of The Boston Globe: "For extensively reported columns that probe the legacy of busing in Boston and its effect on education in the city with a clear eye on ongoing racial contradictions."
Find Stockman's articles in the Boston Globe (1980-present) database. Completing the Globe's run, we have its historical content in our Boston Globe (1872-1981) database.
Criticism
Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker: "For television reviews written with an affection that never blunts the shrewdness of her analysis or the easy authority of her writing."
To peruse all of Nussbaum's contributions to the New Yorker, including her column "On Television," search the New Yorker Digital Archive. From the menu bar at the bottom of the screen, choose "Search." Enter your terms, for example, "Emily Nussbaum," into the search box to find your word or phrase within the current issue, as well as all issues of the New Yorker in a separate tab. For example, here is Nussbaum's coverage of HBO's The Jinx.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for our newspaper, magazine, and journal content. You can browse our Articles & Databases page to find more — it might help if you narrow our databases by one of these subjects: Historical Newspapers; U.S. Newspapers; International Newspapers; or Magazines, Journals and Serials. If you're looking for a specific publication, use our search feature here. (You'll have the option to search for titles available anywhere, as well as those only available on-site at a library.) And that's just our online content! We have even more available in print or microfilm; search our library catalog by journal title to find these holdings.
And if you have any questions or can't find what you're looking for, please visit our general reference desk, email a librarian, or set up an appointment with a reference librarian.
Image Credits: Pulitzer Prize image courtesy of Flickr user Fort Greene Focus, under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license. New Yorker Digital Archive screenshots courtesy of the New Yorker Digital Archive.