‘Hamilton’ wins Pulitzer Prize for drama

The Associated Press won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for documenting the use of slave labor in Southeast Asia to supply seafood to American tables – an investigation that spurred the release of more than 2,000 captive workers.

The awards marked the centennial of the Pulitzers, American journalism’s highest honors.

“Hamilton,” the hip-hop stage biography of Alexander Hamilton, won the Pulitzer for drama.

The dazzling, exuberant musical by creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda has captured popular consciousness like few Broadway shows, having already won a Grammy Award, a spot on the Billboard 200 charts and mentions on “Saturday Night Live.” It’s a leading favorite in this summer’s Tony Awards.

The musical tells the story of how an orphan emigrant from the Caribbean rose to the highest ranks of American society, as told by a young African-American and Latino cast.

It becomes the ninth musical to win the drama award, joining such shows as “South Pacific,” “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Rent.” The last musical to nab the prize was “Next to Normal” in 2010.

Jack Ohman of The Sacramento Bee took the editorial cartooning prize for what judges called work that conveys “wry, rueful perspectives through sophisticated style.”

See a gallery of Jack Ohman’s Pulitzer-winning cartoons.

The Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune received the investigative reporting prize for a project on mental hospitals, and the Tampa Bay Times also won in local reporting for studying the harmful effects of ending school integration in Pinellas County, Florida.

The Los Angeles Times won the breaking news prize for its coverage of the deadly shooting rampage by husband-and-wife extremists at a government building in San Bernardino, California, and The Washington Post received the national reporting award for an examination of killings by police in the U.S.

The New York Times won the international reporting award for detailing the plight of Afghan women, and the breaking news photography prize for images of refugees.

The Boston Globe was honored in the feature photography category for pictures of a boy who had suffered abuse, and the newspaper’s Farah Stockman took the commentary prize for her work on the legacy of school busing in the city.

ProPublica and The Marshall Project received the award for explanatory reporting for exploring a rape case in which authorities initially didn’t believe the victim, prosecuted her for lying, and years later came to realize she was telling the truth.

AP journalists Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza and Esther Htusan chronicled how men from Myanmar and other countries were being imprisoned, sometimes in cages, in an island village in Indonesia and forced to work on fishing vessels. Numerous men reported maimings and deaths on their boats.

The 18-month project involved tracking slave-caught seafood to processing plants that supply supermarkets, restaurants and pet stores in the U.S. Subsequent AP reports detailed the use of slave labor in processing shrimp.

“If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us,” Hlaing Min, 30, a runaway slave from the Indonesian island, told the AP. “There must be a mountain of bones under the sea.”

The stories, photos and videos led to freedom for thousands of fishermen and other laborers, numerous arrests, seizures of millions of dollars in goods and crackdowns on shrimp peeling plants in Thailand.

Established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the prizes were first given out in 1917. Public service award winners receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $10,000 each.

The Pulitzer Prizes recognize the best journalism of 2015 in newspapers, magazines and web sites. There are 14 categories for reporting, photography, criticism and commentary.

In the arts, prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music.

The 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Public Service - Associated Press

Breaking News Reporting - Los Angeles Times Staff

Investigative Reporting - Leonora LaPeter Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Explanatory Reporting - T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project

Local Reporting - Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick and Lisa Gartner of the Tampa Bay Times

National Reporting - The Washington Post Staff

International Reporting - Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times

Feature Writing - Kathryn Schulz of The New Yorker

Commentary - Farah Stockman of The Boston Globe

Criticism - Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker

Editorial Writing - John Hackworth of Sun Newspapers, Charlotte Harbor, FL

Editorial Cartooning - Jack Ohman The Sacramento Bee

Breaking News Photography - Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter of The New York Times and Photography Staff of Thomson Reuters

Feature Photography - Jessica Rinaldi of The Boston Globe

Fiction - The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)

Drama - Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda

History - Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf)

Biography - Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (Penguin Press)

Poetry - Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian (University of Chicago Press)

Nonfiction - Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick (Doubleday)

Music - In for a Penny, In for a Pound by Henry Threadgill (Pi Recordings)

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 3:00 PM with the headline "‘Hamilton’ wins Pulitzer Prize for drama."