On May 4, 2020, The 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced in 15 Journalism categories and 7 Book, Drama and Music categories by its administrator, Dana Canedy,via video-conference instead of a ceremony at Columbia University in New York, United States (US) due to the coronavirus pandemic for their “striking images of life” in the valley.
The three Indian photojournalists namely Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand from Jammu and Kashmir who work for Associated Press (AP) have won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography. The award recognized their exceptional coverage of Jammu and Kashmir during the lockdown that was imposed on Jammu and Kashmir by the Central Government after the revocation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
- The winning photographers captured images of protests, the police, paramilitary action and daily life in Jammu and Kashmir after phone and internet services were shut down in August 2019, making it difficult for the world to gain access to the region.
- Somehow, they managed to reach the airport and convinced Kashmiri passengers to carry photos stored in drives and disks to Delhi and hand them over to the Associated Press staff.
- Yasin and Khan are residents of Srinagar in Kashmir while Anand lives in Jammu.
Colson Whitehead becomes rare author to be honoured with the prize for consecutive books
Colson Whitehead became the rare author to receive Pulitzers for consecutive books when his novel about a brutal Florida reform school during the Jim Crow era, ‘The Nickel Boys,’ was awarded the fiction prize 2020. In 2017, he won for his Civil War era novel ‘The Underground Railroad’.
‘Riveting’ coverage of Alaska policing wins Pulitzer Prize
The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize in public service for illuminating public safety gaps in Alaska, USA revealing that a third of villages had no police protection.
Late Ida B. Wells recognized with Special Awards and Citations
Late Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, who was an American investigative journalist,was honored for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching. She died in 1931.
- The citation comes with a bequest by the Pulitzer Prize board of at least $50,000 in support of her mission. Recipients will be announced at a later date.
Following is the list of 2020 Pulitzers Award Winners in different categories
| Category | Winner | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Public Service | Anchorage Daily News with contributions from ProPublica | Alaska, USA |
| Breaking News Reporting | Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky. | Louisville, Kentucky, USA |
| Investigative Reporting | Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times | USA |
| Explanatory Reporting | Staff of The Washington Post | USA |
| Local Reporting | Staff of The Baltimore Sun | Maryland, USA |
| National Reporting | Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica |
USA |
| International Reporting | Staff of The New York Times | USA |
| Feature Writing | Ben Taub of The New Yorker | USA |
| Commentary | Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times | USA |
| Criticism | Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times | USA |
| Editorial Writing | Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald Press | Palestine& Texas, USA |
| Editorial Cartooning | Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker | USA |
| Feature Photography
Breaking News Photography |
ChanniAnand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of Associated Press (AP)
Photography staff of Reuters |
India
AP Headquarter- New York, USA
|
| Audio Reporting | Staff of This American Life with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News | USA |
|
Books, Drama and Music |
|
|---|---|
| Category | Winner |
| Fiction | The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) |
| Drama | A Strange Loop, by Michael R. Jackson |
| History | Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, by W. Caleb McDaniel (Oxford University Press) |
| Biography | Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser (Ecco) |
| Poetry | The Tradition, by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press) |
| General Nonfiction | The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care, by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) |
| Music | The Central Park Five, by Anthony Davis |
About Pulitzer award:
Established in 1917, the Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States (US). It is presented by Columbia University.
About Associated Press:
President and CEO– Gary Pruitt
Headquarter– New York, USA
