The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize on April 10 for its articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to project Russia's power in the world.
The Times staff won the prize for international reporting for its series of stories titled "Russia's Dark Arts" that proved particularly timely last year after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Putin's government had actively tried to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump through the hacking and release of internal Democratic Party e-mails.
The Times stories revealed that Putin strives to influence world affairs and project Russian power using "techniques" ranging from "assassination to online harassment and the planting of incriminating evidence on opponents," the Pulitzer judges said.
The series began a year ago and explored the rise of online “troll armies,” the strategic spreading of disinformation, and Russia’s unprecedented — and politically consequential — cyberattack on the 2016 American presidential election.
The New York Times won three Pulitzers in all -- the most of any newspaper in 2016 -- taking the prizes for feature writing and breaking news photography as well international reporting.
The Washington Post won the prestigious prize for national reporting for campaign coverage casting doubt on Trump's claims that he is a generous donor to charities.
Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold also broke perhaps the biggest scoop of the 2016 presidential campaign, revealing Trump had been captured on videotape making crude remarks about women and bragging about kissing and grabbing them without their permission.
Other Pulitzer winners included an international consortium of more than 300 reporters on six continents that exposed the so-called Panama Papers detailing the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens used by wealthy and powerful elites around the world.
The Pulitzers are the most prestigious honors in American journalism and have been awarded every year since 1917.
The 19-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. It chooses winners with the help of 102 jurors.
More than 2,500 entries were submitted this year, competing for prizes in 21 categories.
Seven awards recognize fiction, drama, history, biographies, poetry, general nonfiction, and music.
Author Colson Whitehead won the fiction award for "The Underground Railroad," a work the judges said "combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America."