AP Photo/Dita Alangkara
Mike Pride, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, started off the announcement by noting that winners were once informed of their wins by US mail, then by telegram, whereas this year the announcement was being streamed live online and live-tweeted by Pulitzer staff.
The organization received over 3,000 entries across for its prize categories this year.
The prizes are as follows:
Public service: The Associated Press for its reporting on slavery in the seafood and fishing industries.
Breaking news reporting: The Los Angeles Times for its coverage of the San Bernardino shooting.
Investigative reporting: Leonora L. Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for their reporting on abuse in Florida's mental hospitals.
Explanatory reporting: T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project for their report on the failure of law enforcement to properly investigate rapes.
Local reporting: Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick, and Lisa Gartner of the Tampa Bay Times for their report on a school board which turned schools into "failure factories."
National reporting: The Washington Post staff for its national database on how and why fatal police shootings occur.
International reporting: Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times for her reporting on, and giving voice to, abused Afghan women.
Feature Writing: Kathryn Schulz of The New Yorker for her story on the Cascadia fault line, which threatens to shake the northwest United States with a massive earthquake.
Commentary: Farah Stockman of The Boston Globe for her columns on the legacy of Boston's busing system.
Criticism: Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker for her television reviews.
Editorial writing: John Hackworth of Sun Newspapers, Charlotte Harbor, FL, for his editorials on an inmate assault by corrections officers.
Editorial cartooning: Jack Ohman of The Sacramento Bee for his body of editorial cartoons.
Breaking news photogaphy: Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter of The New York Times for photographs of the journeys of refugees, as well as the photography staff of Thomson Reuters for its photographs on the same topic.
Feature photography: Jessica Rinaldi of The Boston Globe for her photographs of a boy attempting to recover from abuse.
Among the winners of the Prizes for the arts were "The Sympathizer," by Viet Thanh Nguyen, for fiction, "Hamilton," by Lin-Manuel Miranda, for drama, and "Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS," by Joby Warrick, for general nonfiction.
The full list of awards, with additional links to works and bios, can be seen on the Pulitzer website.