Pulitzers go to AFP, HuffPost, Politico

NEW YORK - Agence France-Presse

This photo shows 12-year-old Tarana Akbari crying near dead and injured people after explosions during a religious ceremony at the Abul Fazel shrine in Kabul. REUTERS photo

Agence France-Presse and the news websites Huffington Post and Politico each won their first Pulitzer Prizes April 16 as the prestigious journalism awards highlighted global issues and online reporting.

The New York Times won two Pulitzers, and the committee notably did not make awards for editorial writing or fiction in a year which saw Web journalism mark further gains.

AFP’s Massoud Hossaini won the award for breaking news photography “for his heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber’s attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul,” the committee announced.

His AFP photograph published Dec.7 shows young Tarana Akbari screaming after a suicide bomber detonated a bomb in a crowd at the Abul Fazel Shrine in Kabul on Dec. 6.

“When I could stand up, I saw that everybody was around me on the ground, really bloody. I was really, really scared,” said the girl, whose name means “melody,” and whose age has been given as either 10 or 12.

Sig Gissler, the Pulitzer administrator, called the AFP picture “one single riveting photograph,” and “a picture you will long remember.”

David Wood of The Huffington Post won the national reporting prize “for his riveting exploration of the physical and emotional challenges” facing American soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, the committee said.

Politico’s Matt Wuerker won the award for editorial cartooning, satirizing the partisan conflict that engulfed Washington in 2011.

The public service award went to The Philadelphia Inquirer “for its exploration of pervasive violence in the city’s schools,” according to the Pulitzer committee.

The prize for breaking news went to the staff of the Tuscaloosa News for the Alabama paper’s coverage using real-time updates to help locate missing people after a deadly tornado, which forced the newspaper to publish at another site.

The award for investigative reporting was shared by Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of the Associated Press and Michael Berens and Ken Armstrong of The Seattle Times.

The AP was recognized for reporting on the New York Police Department’s clandestine spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities.

The New York Times took awards for explanatory reporting for David Kocieniewski’s reporting on tax loopholes; and for international reporting for Jeffrey Gettleman’s coverage of famine and conflict in East Africa.

Each Pulitzer winner receives $10,000.