The New York Times took the lead for the Pulitzer Prize this afternoon walking off as the winners in five categories including investigative reporting, breaking news reporting and international reporting.

Journalism’s highest award, the Pulitzer for the Free Press was announced this afternoon by Columbia University in New York, which awards the annual prizes.

The Las Vegas Sun won the Pulitzer's most prestigious Public Service Prize for its reporting on the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas strip, according to the board of the Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music.

The New York Times also won for feature photography and criticism.

Other winners were the Los Angeles Times for explanatory reporting, the St. Petersburg Times for feature writing and the Miami Herald for breaking news photography.

This marked the first year that entries from news organizations that publish entirely on the Internet were allowed to compete in the journalism categories. However there were no online winners, and just one online outlet, Politico.com, was a finalist, said Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzers.

The Pulitzer Prize is regarded as the highest national honor in U.S. print journalism, literary achievements and musical composition.

The New York Times Journalism