For a distinguished example of breaking news photography, which may be a single photograph or series of photographs of an event that occurs with no advance notice and requires spontaneous coverage in the moment, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

Photography Staff of Reuters

For raw and urgent photographs documenting the October 7th deadly attack in Israel by Hamas and the first weeks of Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.

Staff members from Reuters (from left: Ammar Awan, Evelyn Hockstein, Ronen Zvulun and Amir Cohen) accept the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography from Columbia University Interim President Katrina Armstrong (far left). (David Dini/The Pulitzer Prizes)

Winning Work

Smoke rises in the background as Hamas gunmen cruise the streets of Gaza in an Israeli military vehicle that was seized after they infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023. (Photo by Ahmed Zakot.)

A woman reacts as she visits her neighbor's property after taking shelter from rocket attacks from Hamas, in Ashkelon, Israel, October 7, 2023. (Photo by Amir Cohen.)

The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie strewn outside a bomb shelter after a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, October 7, 2023. (Photo by Ammar Awad.)

Friends and family take cover as rocket sirens sound at the funeral for Sagiv Ben Zvi, 24, who was killed weeks earlier at the Nova festival following an infiltration by Hamas gunmen, in Holon, Israel, October 26, 2023. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein.)

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from Gaza, as seen from the city of Ashkelon, Israel, October 9, 2023. (Photo by Amir Cohen.)

Palestinians search for casualties amid deep craters filled with broken concrete and twisted metal after Israeli air strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. (Photo by Anas Al-Sharif.)

A Palestinian man carries the body of a deceased woman out of the rubble of a house damaged minutes earlier by Israeli strikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, October 11, 2023. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa.)

In a final embrace Inas Abu Maamar, 36, cradles the shroud-wrapped body of her five-year-old niece, Saly, who died in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis, at the Nasser Hospital morgue before her funeral in southern Gaza, October 17, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Salem.)

An Israeli soldier secures a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital, amid the ground operation of the Israeli army against Hamas, in the northern Gaza Strip, November 22, 2023. Reuters photographers embedded with the Israeli Defence Forces are required, as a condition of their presence, to submit those images for review before publication. No photos were removed by the IDF from this embed. (Photo by Ronen Zvulun.)

Aviva Adrienne Siegel, 62, who was released after being taken hostage during the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, waves to well-wishers from the bus she is traveling in, Ofakim, Israel, November 26, 2023. (Photo by Amir Cohen.)

Palestinians, including the elderly and children, leave the northern Gaza Strip on foot to seek refuge in the south as Israeli tanks roll deeper into the enclave amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in central Gaza, November 10, 2023. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa.)

A wounded Palestinian girl screams “Ya Allah,” (“Oh, my God!”) as she is brought on a stretcher into Nasser hospital, following Israeli strikes on the Ma'an school, amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis located in the southern Gaza Strip, December 5, 2023. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa.)

A soldier takes cover as a mobile artillery unit fires 155 mm shells into Gaza from Netivot, Israel amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas on November 6, 2023. (Photo by Amir Cohen.)

A man holds his two nephews as Palestinians search for victims of an Israeli strike on a residential building in Gaza City, October 25, 2023. (Photo by Yasser Qudih.)

Day breaks as a survivor of an Israeli airstrike on southern Gaza, who was displaced from Gaza City and sought refuge with family in the city of Khan Younis, lays his head on the corpse of a female relative named Tamam which lies alongside other family members who were killed in the strike, Nasser hospital, Khan Younis, Gaza October 24, 2023. The script on the bottom of the image reads “Ghasan Ahmed Youssef Murad.” (Photo by Mohammed Salam.)

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Breaking News Photography in 2024:

Adem Altan of Agence France-Presse

For a heartbreaking image of a man clutching the hand of his deceased daughter a day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

Nicole S. Hester of The Tennessean

For a distressing image of a young girl looking out of a school bus in anguish as she is evacuated from the scene of a deadly shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville.

The Jury

Sandy Hooper(Chair)

Deputy Managing Editor, Visuals, USA Today

Don Bartletti*

Freelance Photojournalist, Los Angeles

Kyndell Harkness

Assistant Managing Editor of Diversity/Community, Star Tribune, Minneapolis

Danese Kenon

Managing Editor, Visuals, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Emilio Morenatti*

Chief Photographer, Associated Press

Winners in Breaking News Photography

2023

Photography Staff of Associated Press

For unique and urgent images from the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the devastation of Mariupol after other news organizations left, victims of the targeting of civilian infrastructure and the resilience of the Ukrainian people who were able to flee.

2022

Marcus Yam of the Los Angeles Times

For raw and urgent images of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan that capture the human cost of the historic change in the country. (Moved from Feature Photography by the jury.)

2021

Photography Staff of Associated Press

For a collection of photographs from multiple U.S. cities that cohesively captures the country's response to the death of George Floyd.

2020

Photography Staff of Reuters

For wide-ranging and illuminating photographs of Hong Kong as citizens protested infringement of their civil liberties and defended the region’s autonomy by the Chinese government.

See All Breaking News Photography

2024 Prize Winners

Explanatory Reporting

Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker

For a searing indictment of our legal system’s reliance on the felony murder charge and its disparate consequences, often devastating for communities of color.

National Reporting

Staff of Reuters

For an eye-opening series of accountability stories focused on Elon Musk’s automobile and aerospace businesses, stories that displayed remarkable breadth and depth and provoked official probes of his companies’ practices in Europe and the United States.

Investigative Reporting

Hannah Dreier of The New York Times

For a deeply reported series of stories revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States—and the corporate and governmental failures that perpetuate it.

Commentary

Vladimir Kara-Murza, contributor, The Washington Post

For passionate columns written under great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.

See All 2024 Winners