AOL Wins First Pulitzer Prize But Shares Dip 1%

By David Zielenziger | April 16 2012 3:57 PM

Shares of AOL, the No. 5 website, fell 1 percent in late Monday trading even after the troubled company won its first Pulitzer Prize.

Reuters

This year, the empire and brainchild of Arianna Huffington won its first Pulitzer for David Wood’s ten-part series about wounded veterans, “Beyond the Battlefield.”

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At the close, AOL shares were down 29 cents at $25.50, despite the award of a Pulitzer Prize to David Wood of its Huffington Post unit for national reporting.

Wood's series on the physical and emotional challenges facing American soldiers severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan was cited as a riveting exploration of the issue by the Pulitzer Prize judges at Columbia University.

The award to AOL, of New York, beat entrants from the Associated Press and Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, owned by his News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) for the prize. AOL acquired Huffington Post for $315 million in February 2011.

Wood, born a Quaker, has covered wars for more than 40 years and has made five trips to Afghanistan and four to Iraq. He had been a staff reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Time Magazine and other publications.

AOL is under pressure from Starboard Value, a hedge fund, to increase shareholder value. Last week, the company sold patents valued above $1 billion to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) in an effort to boost financial performance.