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The Times' winners are Sacramento-based editorial writer Bill Stall for pieces about state government, photographer Carolyn Cole for her work in Liberia, automobile critic Dan Neill for columns in his first year at the paper, the local reporting staff for breaking coverage of last year's wildfires, and the team of four writers -- Abigail Goldman, Nancy Cleeland, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall -- whose series analyzed Wal-Mart's tactics and global impact. No other newspaper won more than two prizes announced today, and it's the biggest day for Pulitzers in the Times' history. (The paper now has won 35 Pulitzer Prizes.) The Public Service medal went to the New York Times for reporting by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman on death and injury among American workers. The full list of winners in journalism, literature and music (details and finalists in PDF format).
* Update: The list of finalists that leaked and ran here a month ago proved to be spot on. The other LAT finalists were David Zucchino for foreign reporting from Iraq, critic Nicolai Ouroussoff for his writing on architecture, editorial writer Andrew Malcolm and science writer Robert Lee Hotz, a finalist in feature writing for his serialized story on the Columbia space shuttle disaster. The Pulitzer board opted not to award a prize in feature reporting, which suggests to me that the board wanted to avoid giving the Times a sixth prize. The other local finalists were Bernard Wolfson, William Heisel and Chris Knap of the Orange County Register, whose stories on the quality of care at 26 local hospitals were nominated in the explanatory reporting category.