NEW YORK
A local Missouri newspaper on Monday won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of violent street protests following the August 2014 shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer.
Winners of the 2015 Pulitzer Prizes, the most prestigious American journalism awards, were announced in New York.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch won a Pulitzer for breaking news photography for its "stunning photojournalism that served the community while informing the country," the jury said.
The St. Louis County suburb of Ferguson became a focal point of a national debate on race relations and police brutality following the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson.
The incident ignited fierce street protests and elicited an initially heavy-handed police crackdown on protesters.
The Post-Dispatch was joined by a number of other local papers on the list of award winners, including The Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, The Buffalo News, and The Post and Courier from Charleston, South Carolina.
The New York Times, Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal also took home Pulitzer honors.
The staff at The New York Times won a Pulitzer for international reporting for "courageous front-line reporting and vivid human stories on Ebola in Africa, engaging the public with the scope and details of the outbreak while holding authorities accountable."
Freelance photographer Daniel Berehulak was awarded "for his gripping, courageous photographs of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa."
On March 18, one of the Ebola pictures taken by Berehulak was chosen as Photo of the Year 2014 at the Turkish Airlines-sponsored 1st Istanbul Photo Awards, organized by The Anadolu Agency and supported by the Promotion Fund of the Prime Ministry.
The Pulitzer Prize also honors achievement in letters and music.
Anthony Doerr won a Pulitzer for fiction for his best-selling novel "All the Light We Cannot See," and Stephen Adly Guirgis received a drama award for his dark comedy "Between Riverside and Crazy."
