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New York • The biggest U.S. news story of 2016 — the tumultuous presidential campaign — yielded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for the Washington Post reporter who not only raised doubts about Donald Trump's charitable giving but also revealed that the candidate had been recorded crudely bragging about grabbing women.
David Fahrenthold won the prize for national reporting, with the judges citing stories that examined Trump's charitable foundation and called into question whether the real estate magnate was as generous as he said.
Fahrenthold's submission also included his story about Trump's raunchy behind-the-scenes comments during a 2005 taping of "Access Hollywood." His talk about groping women's genitals rocked the White House race and prompted a rare apology from the then-candidate.
The judges said Fahrenthold's reporting "created a model for transparent journalism," a model he built partly by using Twitter to publicize his efforts and let Trump see what he was doing. The president "can expect to see more of me on Twitter," said Fahrenthold.
The New York Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer in public service for uncovering how authorities used an obscure law, originally enacted to crack down on prostitution in Times Square in the 1970s, to evict hundreds of people, mostly poor minorities, from their homes.
The New York Times' staff received the international reporting award for its work on Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to project Moscow's power abroad. The award in feature writing went to the Times' C.J. Chivers for a story about a Marine's descent into violence after returning home from war.
Winners ranged from partnerships spanning hundreds of reporters to newspapers as small as The Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly, 3,000-circulation family-owned paper in Iowa. Co-owner Art Cullen won the editorial-writing award for challenging powerful corporate agricultural interests in the state. Cullen said he was stunned by the win. "Nobody's ever heard of us before," he said with a laugh.
The prize for explanatory reporting went to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald, which amassed more than 400 journalists to examine the leaked "Panama Papers" and expose the way that politicians, criminals and rich people stashed money in offshore accounts.