NEW YORK — The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for an examination of the deadly toll of domestic violence, while The New York Times collected three awards and the Los Angeles Times two.

The Seattle Times staff took the breaking news award for its coverage of a mudslide that killed 43 people and its exploration of whether the disaster could have been prevented.

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both won investigative reporting prizes, the Times for an examination of lobbyists’ influence on state attorneys general, the Journal for detailing fraud and waste in the Medicare payment system.

The Times’ coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa won Pulitzers for international reporting and feature photography, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was honored in the breaking news photography category for its images of the racial unrest touched off by the deadly police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

The Washington Post took the national reporting prize for exposing security lapses that spurred an overhaul of the Secret Service.

The Post and Courier’s exploration of 300 women’s deaths in the past decade shed light on a legal system in which first-time offenders face at most 30 days in jail for a domestic violence beating but can get five years in prison for cruelty to a dog.

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“We felt so passionate about this project, and we felt so passionate about the difference it could bring to South Carolina,” said P.J. Browning, publisher of 84,200-circulation Post and Courier, which last won a Pulitzer in 1925 for editorial writing.

Since the series was published, state lawmakers have proposed tougher penalties for domestic violence, and Gov. Nikki Haley created a task force to investigate the problem.

Here is a list of winners:

PUBLIC SERVICE

Winner: The Post and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina

Finalists: The Boston Globe; the Wall Street Journal

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BREAKING NEWS REPORTING

Winner: The Seattle Times staff

Finalists: The Buffalo News staff; the Los Angeles Times staff

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Winners: Eric Lipton of the New York Times; the Wall Street Journal staff

Finalists: David Jackson, Gary Marx and Duaa Eldeib of the Chicago Tribune

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EXPLANATORY REPORTING

Winner: Zachary R. Mider of Bloomberg News

Finalists: John Ingold, Joe Amon and Lindsay Pierce of the Denver Post; Joan Biskupic, Janet Roberts and John Shiffman of Reuters

LOCAL REPORTING

Winner: Rob Kuznia, Rebecca Kimitch and Frank Suraci of the Daily Breeze, Torrance, California

Finalists: Joe Mahr, Joseph Ryan and Matthew Walberg of the Chicago Tribune; Ziva Branstetter and Cary Aspinwall of the Tulsa World

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NATIONAL REPORTING

Winner: Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post

Finalists: Marisa Taylor, Jonathan Landay and Ali Watkins of McClatchy Newspapers; Walt Bogdanich and Mike McIntire of the New York Times

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING

Winner: The New York Times staff

Finalists: Richard Marosi and Don Bartletti of the Los Angeles Times; Ned Parker and a team from Reuters

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FEATURE WRITING

Winner: Diana Marcum of the Los Angeles Times

Finalists: Sarah Schweitzer of the Boston Globe; Jennifer Gonnerman of the New Yorker

COMMENTARY

Winner: Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle

Finalists: David Carr of the New York Times; Matthew Kaminski of the Wall Street Journal

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CRITICISM

Winner: Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times

Finalists: Manohla Dargis of the New York Times; Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice

EDITORIAL WRITING

Winner: Kathleen Kingsbury of the Boston Globe

Finalists: Tony Messenger and Kevin Horrigan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Jill Burcum of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis

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EDITORIAL CARTOONING

Winner: Adam Zyglis of the Buffalo News

Finalists: Kevin Kallaugher of the Baltimore Sun; Dan Perkins, drawing as “Tom Tomorrow” of Daily Kos

BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY

Winner: St. Louis Post-Disptach photography staff

Finalists: Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev and Uriel Sinai of the New York Times; Tyler Hicks, Sergey Ponomarev and Wissam Nassar of the New York Times

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FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

Winner: Daniel Berehulak, freelance photographer, the New York Times

Finalists: Bulent Kilic of Agence France-Presse; Bob Owen, Jerry Lara and Lisa Krantz of the San Antonio Express-News

FICTION

Winner: “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr

Finalists: “Let Me Be Frank with You” by Richard Ford; “The Moor’s Account” by Laila Lalami; “Lovely, Dark, Deep” by Joyce Carol Oates

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DRAMA

Winner: “Between Riverside and Crazy” by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Finalists: “Marjorie Prime” by Jordan Harrison; “Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, 3)” by Suzan-Lori Parks

HISTORY

Winner: “Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People” by Elizabeth A. Fenn

Finalists: “Empire of Cotton: A Global History” by Sven Beckert; “An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America” by Nick Bunker

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BIOGRAPHY OR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Winner: “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe” by David I. Kertzer

Finalists: “Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism” by Thomas Brothers; “Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928” by Stephen Kotkin

POETRY

Winner: “Digest” by Gregory Pardlo

Finalists: “Reel to Reel” by Alan Shapiro; “Compass Rose” by Arthur Sze

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GENERAL NONFICTION

Winner: “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert

Finalists: “No Good Men Among the Living” by Anand Gopal; “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China” by Evan Osnos

MUSIC

Winner: “Anthracite Fields” by Julia Wolfe

Finalists: “Xiaoxiang” by Lei Liang; “The Aristos” by John Zorn


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