Online News Outlets Nab Pulitzers

The Huffington Post, once dismissed by traditional news organisations as little more than an aggregator of other people's stories, has won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, putting it alongside the likes of the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer in receiving America's most coveted journalism honour.

The AOL-owned site, founded by Arianna Huffington, won for a series by David Wood, an experienced war reporter for publications including Time magazine and the Baltimore Sun, about the physical and emotional challenges facing US soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ms Huffington said the award "recognises both David's exemplary piece of purposeful journalism and HuffPost's commitment to original reporting that affects both the national conversation and the lives of real people."

Politico, a political news organisation founded in 2007, won for editorial cartooning, but this was not the first year the Pulitzer judges have awarded relatively young news brands. ProPublica, a non-profit investigative reporting outlet that works with other news organisations as well as on its own website, won Pulitzer prizes in 2010 and 2011.

The Philadelphia Inquirer won this year's coveted public service award for a series on crime in the city's schools. The Tuscaloosa News won the breaking news reporting award for coverage of a deadly tornado, with the judges citing its use of social media as well as traditional reporting.

The New York Times won two prizes, for explanatory reporting and international reporting, and two news organisations "the Associated Press and the Seattle Times – won investigative reporting prizes, but the judges made no award for editorial writing or for fiction.

The Denver Post won for the feature photography award for a series that also featured the effects of war on returning veterans.

The Pulitzer prizes are administered by Columbia University.

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