The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1950.

Journalism awards

• Public Service:
  • The Chicago Daily News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for the work of George Thiem and Roy J. Harris, respectively, in exposing the presence of 37 Illinois newspapermen on an Illinois State payroll.^[1]
• Local Reporting:
  • Meyer Berger of The New York Times, for his 4,000-word story on the mass killings by Howard Unruh in Camden, New Jersey.
• National Reporting:
  • Edwin O. Guthman of The Seattle Times, for his series on the clearing of Communist charges of Professor Melvin Rader, who had been accused of attending a secret Communist school.^[2]
• International Reporting:
  • Edmund Stevens of The Christian Science Monitor, for his series of 43 articles written over a three-year residence in Moscow entitled, "This Is Russia Uncensored".
• Editorial Writing:
  • Carl M. Saunders of the Jackson Citizen Patriot, for distinguished editorial writing during the year.
• Editorial Cartooning:
  • James T. Berryman of the Washington Evening Star, for "All Set for a Super-Secret Session in Washington".
• Photography:
  • Bill Crouch of The Oakland Tribune, for his picture, "Near Collision at Air Show".^[3]

Letters, Drama and Music Awards

• Fiction:
  • The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (Sloane).
• Drama:
  • South Pacific by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan (Random).
• History:
  • Art and Life in America by Oliver Waterman Larkin (Rinehart).
• Biography or Autobiography:
  • John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis (Knopf).
• Poetry:
  • Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks (Harper).
• Music;
  • Music in The Consul by Gian-Carlo Menotti (G. Schirmer), produced at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York.