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Penn State Story Earns Pulitzer For 'The Patriot News'

(The awards were announced just after 3 p.m. ET.)

For "distinguished ... reporting on significant issues of local concern," reporter Sara Ganim and The Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pa., have won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the so-called Penn State scandal.

Other prize winners, which were just announced, include:

-- The Tuscaloosa News for its coverage of the tornado that devastated the city last spring.

-- The Philadelphia Inquirer for its investigative reporting on violence in that city's schools.

-- The Seattle Times (for reporting about a government program that "moved vulnerable patients from safer pain-control medication to methadone, a cheaper but more dangerous drug") and the Associated Press (its "spotlighting of the New York Police Department's clandestine spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities") for investigative reporting.

-- David Wood of The Huffington Post for his national reporting on the physical and emotional challenges faced by veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars.

-- Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times for his international reporting from conflict zones in East Africa.

We'll add more in a moment.

Update at 3:25 p.m. ET. More Winners:

-- Explanatory Reporting: David Kocieniewski of The New York Times "for his lucid series that penetrated a legal thicket to explain how the nation's wealthiest citizens and corporations often exploited loopholes and avoided taxes."

-- Feature Writing: Eli Sanders of The Stranger, a Seattle (Wash.) weekly, "for his haunting story of a woman who survived a brutal attack that took the life of her partner."

-- Commentary: Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune.

-- Editorial cartooning: Matt Wuerker of Politico.

-- Breaking news photography: Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse "for his heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber's attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul."

-- Feature photography: Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post, "for his compassionate chronicle of an honorably discharged veteran."

-- Drama: Water by the Spoonful, by Quiara Alegría Hudes.

-- History: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by the late Manning Marable (Viking).

-- Biography: George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis (The Penguin Press).

-- Poetry: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press).

-- General Nonfiction: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton and Company). Related post on Krulwich Wonders: Lucretius, Man Of Modern Mystery.

-- Music: Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts by Kevin Puts (Aperto Press).

No awards were made in the categories of editorial writing or fiction.

Our original post:

This year's Pulitzer Prizes are due to be announced at 3 p.m. ET.

We won't make the understandable mistake of The Daily Beast, which appears to have hit the publish button on its "draft" of the news a bit early — it lists the "Times" as winning every category.

But if you are wondering about the leading candidates for this year's awards, Poynter's Roy Harris rounds them up here.

We'll update this post with the news after the prizes are announced. The Pulitzer website is here.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.