The honor of winning was accompanied by a handsome $10,000 prize.
ProPublica is an independent journalism outlet that syndicates content to various traditional news organizations but itself operates solely on the Internet. This organization prides itself on its investigative reporting and was awarded a prize in that category along with the Philadelphia Daily News. ProPublica's Sheri Fink was recognized for a piece that told about "the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina," according to the Pulitzer announcement [PDF]. Fink was competing against a New York Times news team investigating food safety and a Sarasota Herald-Tribune team that uncovered billions of dollars in real estate fraud.
ProPublica, a nonprofit startup, sees itself a a resource for struggling news organizations that can no longer afford to focus human resources on investigative reporting. "Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated 'investigative' to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats," the ProPublica site states. "This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy."
The prize for editorial cartooning was awarded to Mark Fiore for his series of web videos appearing on SFGate.com. This videos, which ranged between 45 seconds and two minutes in length, proved that the cartoonist's "biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary," according to the Pulitzer announcement. Fiore was competing against Tony Auth of The Philidelphia Inquirer and Matt Wuerker of Politico, a multimedia journalism organization based outside of Washington, D.C. You can see some of Fiore's work at his SFGate archive or on his personal site.