Associated Press, Reuters and Minnesota Star Tribune among Pulitzer winners for 2025 work

NEW YORK — The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for scrutinizing the Trump administration’s sweeping, choppy cuts and changes to federal agencies, and the Associated Press won the award for international reporting.

The Post’s coverage illuminated the fast-moving, sometimes opaque particulars of President Trump’s drive to reshape the national government, and judges credited the Post with detailing what the changes meant for individual Americans.

The Los Angeles Times photography staff was recognized as a finalist in the breaking news photography category for its coverage of the January 2025 firestorms that devastated the region. The images revealed the chaos and human toll of the Palisades and Eaton fires as flames tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

The Times has a distinguished history of award-winning photography. In 2023, staff photographer Christina House won a Pulitzer for feature photography, and in 2022 former staff photographer Marcus Yam won in the breaking news photography category for his work at The Times.

This year, Times columnist Gustavo Arellano was recognized as a finalist for opinion writing for articles chronicling the fear and devastation of immigration raids in Los Angeles. Pulitzer Administrator Marjorie Miller called Arellano’s commentary on the issue “passionate and vivid.”

Arellano was also a finalist for opinion writing in 2024 and was part of the team that won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for reporting on a leaked audio recording that upended Los Angeles politics.

Freelancer Ivan Ehlers was also a finalist, in the illustrated reporting and commentary award for illustrations published in the Times.

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 prizes, Reuters won two, and smaller outlets including the Connecticut Mirror and the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” also were recognized in a challenging year for American journalism.

In the last few months, the Post cut a third of its staff, CBS News announced it would shut down its nearly century-old radio service, the Associated Press offered buyouts to more than 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 Trump continued to bash, and sometimes sue, outlets whose coverage he finds objectionable.

“This is always a day of celebration in our communities, but perhaps never more so than today as we face tremendous” challenges, Miller said in a livestream announcing the awards.

‘Sweeping and deeply impactful reporting’

The AP’s international project — spanning three years, thousands of pages of documents and numerous interviews — found that American companies help lay the foundations of the Chinese government’s system for monitoring and policing its citizens.

Other stories included a look at how across presidential administrations, Washington allowed tech companies and Beijing to skirt regulations intended to bar China from access to certain materials, such as advanced computer chips.

“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.

Reuters won the award for national reporting. Its work looked at how President Trump has used the federal government and his supporters’ influence to expand presidential authority and to try to punish his foes, the award judges said.

It was one of two awards for Reuters. Its reporting on the social media giant Meta won a prize in the newly revived category for beat reporting.

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage of last year’s mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school took the prize for breaking news.

Judges praised the “thoroughness and compassion” of the newspaper’s reporting on a scene of carnage in its hometown. Two children were killed and more than a dozen others were injured as a shooter opened fire during the school’s first Mass of the academic year. The shooter later was found dead of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot.

The Post also won the feature photography prize for a visual essay on a family welcoming a firstborn as the child’s father grappled with terminal cancer.

Pulitzers come a week after an attack on press dinner

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’ Assn. dinner in Washington. The man is now charged with trying to assassinate Trump, who was attending the event for his first time as president.

The Pulitzer journalism awards are for work done in 2025 by U.S. news sites, newspapers, magazines and wire services in text, photo and audio. Video and graphics can be part of an entry package. Television and radio stations’ websites also are eligible if their entries focus on written material.

Separately, Monday’s awards also honored books, music and theater.

The Pulitzer 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 winner earns a gold medal.

Decisions are made by the Pulitzer Board, based at Columbia University in New York.

Peltz writes for the Associated Press. Times staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report.