The Washington Post won six Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, the second highest by any newspaper in a single year. The awards included the coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre and the exposure of the shabby treatment of the wounded soldiers at the Walter reed Army Medical Center.

 

Two Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille were awarded Pulitzer for their hard work and dedication. Jo Becker and Barton Gellman, won the national reporting award while Steve Fainaru won the international reporting prize for his examination of private security contractors in Iraq.

 

The economist columnist of the Washington Post Steven Pearlstin won awards for commentary and when the magazine columnist Gene Weingarten won the award then the Post broke its previous record of four Pulitzers in 2006.

 

The New York Times received two Pulitzers, one for investigative reporting for toxic ingredients in medicines and other products in China and one examining the ethical issues surrounding DNA testing. The record for the maximum number of Pulitzer prize in a single year is held by the New York Times, which won 7 of awards in 2002. It is only the fourth time that any newspaper has won more than three of the 14 journalism prizes in a single year.

 

As the awards were being announced, there were cheers in the newsroom of the Post and its executive editor Leonard Downie Jr said that the awards are a reminder that the Post can produce this type of journalism anytime. Some of the others who won the coveted title are:

 

Adress Latif of Reuters won the breaking news photography award for his pictures of a wounded man in the demonstrations in Myanmar.

 

Peston Gunnaway of The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire won the feature photography award for reporting a family coping with fatal illness.

 

Michael Ramirez of Investor's Business Daily won the award for editorial cartooning.

 

Mark Feeney, the visual art critic of the Boston Globe, won the prize for criticism.

 

David Umhoefer of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the local reporting award.

 

Junot Diaz won the prize for fiction.

 

Tracy Letts won the award for her drama "August: Osage County”

 

Daniel Walker Howe won for " What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848" in the history category.

 

John Matteson won for biography, for his work" Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.”