By co-winning a Pulitzer Prize today for investigative reporting and being named a finalist in the coveted Public Service category, ProPublica broke new ground for the growing number of non-profit news outlets.

Paul Steiger, ProPublica editor-in-chief and a former Pulitzer Board chair, said the honors won today indicate the new non-profit approach works and has a clear future.

“To have a reporter get an award in investigative and another a finalist in Public Service, those are at the top of the list of categories for the kind of work we do,” Steiger told me. “It suggests that our non-partisan, non-profit model can serve a role in this time of expanding change in the media.”

ProPublica shared the investigative prize with The New York Times for its in-depth report on a hospital in New Orleans and its hazardous work following Hurricane Katrina. It was a cover story for an edition of The New York Times Magazine.

Placing as a finalist in Public Service was a ProPublica report that ran in the Los Angeles Times on poor oversight of California nurses.

“It is wonderful to get this award and to be recognized as a finalist,” he said.