Pulitzer Prizes offer snapshot of life before Covid-19

The New York Times picked up three awards, including the coveted best investigative reporting

Demonstrators protesting the proposed extradition bill aim their flashlights towards riot police as they are chased through the streets of Hong Kong, China, August 25, 2019. Reuters has been awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for Hong Kong protests. REUTERSShow less

The 2020 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, which took place on Monday evening, served as a reminder of the vastly different world in which we lived before the coronavirus outbreak.

On Monday, the prizes were awarded to news organisations that looked into topics including election interference, human rights, sexual violence, corporate and political corruption and racism in the US.

The annual competition awards journalism that highlights society’s ills and injustices, as well as astounding investigative reporting.

This year’s awards were postponed for weeks because of the coronavirus and were announced on video in the loungeroom of Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy.

Prizes are awarded yearly in 21 categories and in 20 of them, each winner receives a certificate and a $15,000 cash award.

The New York Times led the way in several prizes this year, with three accolades, including the coveted investigative reporting award for an expose of New York City's taxi industry.

It showed how lenders profited from expensive loans that shattered the lives of vulnerable drivers.

The story rocked the industry, eventually leading to state and federal investigations and sweeping reforms.

The Washington Post won an award for explanatory reporting for its series that demonstrated the grave effects of climate change.

In the series, the paper analysed data tracking nearly 170 years of temperature records to map every place on the planet that has already warmed by 2°C above pre-industrial times.

Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times won the national reporting award for stories that exposed design flaws in the Boeing 737 Max that led to two deadly crashes and revealed failures in government regulation.

ProPublica also won the award for its investigation into America's 7th Fleet after a series of deadly naval accidents in the Pacific.

Ben Taub of The New Yorker won best feature writing for his harrowing account of a man who was kidnapped, tortured and deprived of his liberty for more than a decade at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Breaking news photography was won by Reuters, for its stunning photos Hong Kong protests last year.

Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of Associated Press won the feature photography award for their striking images of life in the contested territory of Kashmir as India revoked its independence.

The awards do not just cover journalism. There are prizes for fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry and general non-fiction.

There are also awards for music and special citation.

US author Colson Whitehead made history by becoming only the fourth writer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice.

The African-American author, 50, was awarded for The Nickel Boys, which chronicles the abuse of black boys at a juvenile reform school in Jim-Crow era Florida.

Only Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike had won the Pulitzer for Fiction twice before.