Bystanders watch as police walk down a street May 28, 2020, in St. Paul, Minn. Protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody, broke out in Minneapolis for a third straight night. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down, a sign of distress, next to a burning building, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis. Protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody, broke out in Minneapolis for a third straight night. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) Police officers and protesters clash near CNN Center, May 29, 2020, in Atlanta, in response to George Floyd’s death. The protest started peacefully earlier in the day before demonstrators clashed with police. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart) A protester raises her fist in the air next to a burning police vehicle in Los Angeles, May 30, 2020, during a demonstration over the death of George Floyd. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu) Protesters gather in front of a burning fast food restaurant, May 29, 2020, in Minneapolis. Protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody, broke out in Minneapolis for a third straight night. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) A demonstrator hides under a barrier as federal officers release tear gas during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse, July 29, 2020, in Portland, Ore. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) Protesters raise their hands on command from police as they are detained prior to arrest and processing at a gas station on South Washington Street, May 31, 2020, in Minneapolis. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) A Black Lives Matter protester burns a sign outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on July 21, 2020 in Portland, Ore. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) New York police officers arrest people inside a vandalized Balenciaga store in New York, June 2, 2020, during street protests over the death of George Floyd. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II) Demonstrators vandalize a car as they protest the death of George Floyd, May 31, 2020, near the White House in Washington, D.C. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) An American flag falls from its pole as police attempt to secure the area after protesters set fire to the department of corrections building, Aug. 24, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. Protests have erupted following the police shooting of Jacob Blake a day earlier. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/David Goldman) A protester, center, tries to stop others from attacking a police vehicle during a protest over the death of George Floyd in Los Angeles, May 30, 2020. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu) Demonstrators protest, June 4, 2020, near the White House in Washington, D.C., over the death of George Floyd. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Police surround demonstrators in Times Square during a protest march, June 4, 2020, in New York. The image was part of a series of photographs by The Associated Press that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Josefa Ribas, 86, who is bedridden, looks at nurse Alba Rodriguez as Ribas’ husband, Jose Marcos, 89, stands by in their home in Barcelona, Spain, March 30, 2020, during the coronavirus outbreak. Ribas suffers from dementia, and Marcos fears for them both if the virus enters their home. “If I get the virus, who will take care of my wife?” The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) A woman sits on her balcony in downtown Barcelona, Spain, May 7, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Leopoldo Roman, 85, lies in bed wearing a face mask as he waits for doctors during a home medical visit in Barcelona, Spain, April 3, 2020. Roman, whose leg was amputated years ago, has to pay for daily care out of his pension since the public system only provides for a social worker to come for an hour a day, three days a week. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Nurse Marta Fernandez holds up a tablet computer over the chest of 94-year-old Maria Teresa Argullos Bove so that she can speak to her sister, children and grandchildren from her hospital bed at the COVID-19 ward at the hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 18, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Wearing protective suits to prevent infection, mortuary workers move the body of an elderly person who died of COVID-19 from an elevator after removing it from a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 13, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Residents look at the street through a window at the Icaria nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 25, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) A patient infected with Coronavirus rests in a chair inside an isolated room at the COVID-19 ward of a public hospital in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 18, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) The body of an elderly person is prepared inside a coffin for her funeral at a morgue in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 5, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) The body of an elderly person who died of COVID-19 is covered with a sheet on her bed in a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 13, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) A mortuary worker collects the ashes of a COVID-19 victim from an oven after the remains where cremated at Memora mortuary in Girona, Spain, Nov. 19, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Francisco España, 60, looks at the Mediterranean sea from a promenade next to the “Hospital del Mar” in Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 4, 2020. Francisco spent 52 days in the ICU of the hospital due to an infection of Coronavirus and he has being allowed by his doctors on this day to spend almost ten minutes at the seaside as part of a therapy to recover from the ICU. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Mortuary workers take off their protective clothing at the entrance of a building decorated with a Christmas tree, after removing the body of person who is suspected of dying from COVID-19 in Barcelona, Spain, Dec. 23, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Agustina Cañamero, 81, hugs and kisses her husband Pascual Pérez, 84, through a plastic film screen to avoid contracting the coronavirus at a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, June 22, 2020. Even when it comes wrapped in plastic, a hug can convey tenderness and relief, love and devotion. The fear that gripped Agustina Cañamero during the 102 days she and her 84-year-old husband spent physically separated during Spain’s coronavirus outbreak dissolved the moment the couple embraced through a screen of plastic film. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Álvaro Puig Moreno watches television while eating a his Christmas Eve dinner at his home in Barcelona, Spain, Dec. 24, 2020. “The solitude gets to me these days, I often feel depressed,” Puig said. “These holidays, instead of making me happy, make me sad. I hate them. Most of family has died, I am one of the last ones left. I will spend Christmas at home alone because I don’t have anyone to spend them with.” The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) A woman pushes a cart with her belongings as she walks along an empty street in downtown Barcelona, Spain, March 21, 2020. The image was part of a series by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Associated Press photographers awarded the Pulitzer Prize on Friday had dodged tear gas to capture protests against racial injustice and patiently built trust with elderly people to empathetically document the toll of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The outstanding work of the AP photography staff in covering racial justice protests and Emilio Morenatti’s compassionate, yearlong look at the impact of COVID-19 on the elderly in Spain are two shining examples of what photojournalists strive to do everywhere: use light and shadow to bring knowledge and understanding to all corners of the globe,” said J. David Ake, AP assistant managing editor and director of photography.
Morenatti separated himself from his family for months to avoid the risk of exposure as he documented the toll of COVID-19 on the elderly. He credited half the award to his wife, who took care of their children, and the other half to his colleagues.
“I never thought that I could win the Pulitzer, actually, but much less than I could win at using my electric scooter around a few dozen kilometers from my house in Barcelona,” he said.
Morenatti is a veteran photographer with wide experience in war zones. He was embedded with the U.S. military in southern Afghanistan in August 2009 when the vehicle he was in was hit by a roadside bomb. His left leg was amputated below the knee.
The AP photographers who won in the breaking news category captured the drama and raw emotion of protests that roiled U.S. cities after the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.
AP photographers captured close-up images of demonstrators with fists in the air and sometimes violent conflicts with police. One widely published photograph by Julio Cortez on the night of May 28 in riot-torn Minneapolis shows a lone, silhouetted protester running with an upside-down American flag past a burning liquor store.
The ten photographers who won the breaking news prize are freelancer Noah Berger, Alex Brandon, freelancer Ringo H.W. Chiu, Cortez, Frank Franklin II, David Goldman, John Minchillo, Marcio Sanchez, Mike Stewart and Evan Vucci.
“It means the world to me to share this with my colleagues,” Minchillo said on Twitter. “I hoped for one Pulitzer in a lifetime of hustling and this is how I wanted it. With my people, on the big story.”
The AP also had two Pulitzer finalists in the investigative reporting category and an additional finalist for breaking news photography.
The AP’s two finalists in the investigative reporting category were for “Fruits of Labor,” a series by reporters Margie Mason and Robin McDowell that exposed widespread abuse in the lucrative palm oil industry, and for reporter Dake Kang and AP staff’s reporting on China’s early mishandling of the coronavirus and human rights violations against the Uyghurs.
This is the second year in a row AP has won the Pulitzer for feature photography. AP last won both photography prizes in 1999.
The news cooperative, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, has won 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography.
The Latest on the 2021 Pulitzer Prizes:
RICHMOND — Michael Paul Williams of Virginia’s Richmond Times-Dispatch won this year’s prize for commentary for a series of “penetrating and historically insightful columns” about the process of dismantling the state capital city’s Confederate monuments.
Williams’ winning work was written after the killing of George Floyd, which ignited removals of monuments to Confederates, colonizers and tyrants around the world. The issue was particularly resonant in Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy steeped in Civil War history and Lost Cause iconography.
Williams wrote in July in one of his winning columns that Richmond was “now a city in search of heroes and causes we can all rally around” and that Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s “likeness was lifted from a perch it never should have occupied in a just and evolved society,” after workers removed the first of many Confederate statues the mayor ordered off city property.
The newspaper’s leadership said in a joint statement that Williams’ commentary was the “centerpiece” of its coverage of Richmond’s legacy of inequity and that he wrote “with a voice that spoke to the trauma of yesterday and the hope for tomorrow.”
MORE ON THE PULITZERS:
NEW YORK — One of the country’s most esteemed novelists, Louise Erdrich, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Night Watchman.” Other winners for books include the late Les Payne and daughter Tamara Payne for their Malcolm X biography “The Dead Are Arising.”
Marcia Chatelain’s “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America” won for history. Natalie Diaz’s “Postcolonial Love Poem” was the poetry winner and David Zucchino’s “Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy” was cited for general nonfiction.
Tani Leon’s composition “Stride” was the winner for music.
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NEW YORK — The Pulitzer board recognized two winners in the Explanatory Reporting category that touched on the major stories of the year.
Ed Yong of The Atlantic won for a “lucid, definitive” series on the pandemic which the board said “anticipated the course of the disease, synthesized the complex challenges the country faced, illuminated the US government’s failures and provided clear and accessible context to the scientific and human challenges it posed.”
Andrew Chung, Lawrence Hurley, Andrea Januta, Jaimi Dowdell and Jackie Botts of Reuters won for an investigation of the legal concept of qualified immunity and how it shields police from prosecution. The board cited the examination of court cases “powered by a pioneering data analysis.”
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BOSTON — The Boston Globe received the investigative reporting Pulitzer for a series demonstrating how poor government oversight imperils road safety.
Matt Rocheleau, Vernal Coleman, Laura Crimaldi, Evan Allen and Brendan McCarthy were recognized “for reporting that uncovered a systematic failure by state governments to share information about dangerous truck drivers that could have kept them off the road,” the Pulitzer board said.
The investigation reported how the increasingly deadly trucking industry operates with minimal federal government oversight.
Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory praised his staff’s winning coverage for the investigative reporting Pulitzer, highlighting their “tireless shoe-leather reporting” and the reforms their work produced.
Brendan McCarthy, the editor on the series, said the Globe “quickly found that this kind of tragedy had been happening year after year for decades. The problems were in plain sight but had never been addressed.”
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NEW YORK — “The Hot Wing King” by Katori Hall, a play set around a hot wing cooking competition, has won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for drama during a theater season that saw most venues largely shuttered.
The Pulitzer board hailed “The Hot Wing King” for its look at masculinity and how it is filtered “by the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family as they prepare for a culinary competition”
Finalists included “Circle Jerk” by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley,” and “Stew” by Zora Howard.
With most theaters closed during the pandemic, the Pulitzer Prize Board altered the requirements for this year’s drama award, allowing postponed or canceled works, as well as plays produced and performed in places other than theaters. “The Hot Wing King” opened off-Broadway just days before the city’s theaters were closed.
Hall is the author of the Olivier Award-winning “The Mountaintop” and is a Tony Award-nominated co-playwright of Broadway’s “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.”
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NEW YORK — The Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism has been awarded to The New York Times for its reporting on the coronavirus.
The Times’ reporting on the pandemic stood out in 2020 for its depth and accessibility.
The paper provided a wealth of data in easy-to-digest forms, including graphs on new cases and hospitalizations, a map of hot spots and a table on trends by state.
The Pulitzer committee said the Times was recognized for “courageous, prescient and sweeping coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that exposed racial and economic inequities, government failures in the U.S. and beyond and filled a data vacuum that helped local governments, health care providers, businesses and individuals to be better prepared and protected.”
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MINNEAPOLIS — The teenager whose video documenting the death of George Floyd set off a global movement over racial injustice has been awarded a special citation by the Pulitzer Prizes.
Darnella Frazier was cited “for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality, around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists quest for truth and justice.”
Frazier was 17 when she recorded Floyd’s death in May 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police.
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MINNEAPOLIS — The Star Tribune, of Minneapolis, has won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd and the resulting civil unrest that tore through the city.
Floyd, a Black man, died as he was being pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds sparked a wave of protests, first in the Twin Cities and then nationwide.
Star Tribune journalists covered the rage in Minneapolis, where protesters burned buildings including a police station. The Pulitzer board called the coverage “urgent, authoritative and nuanced.”
