The Pulitzer Prizes for 1991 included not only awards given in all categories, but two separate awards were given for International Reporting:
- Public Service:
- Des Moines Register, For reporting by Jane Schorer that, with the victim's consent, named a woman who had been raped—which prompt widespread reconsideration of the traditional media practice of concealing the identity of rape victims.
- Spot News Reporting:
- Staff of The Miami Herald, For stories profiling a local cult leader, his followers, and their links to several area murders.
- Investigative Reporting:
- Explanatory Journalism:
- Beat Reporting:
- National Reporting:
- International Reporting:
- International Reporting:
- Feature Writing:
- Sheryl James of the St. Petersburg Times, For a compelling series about a mother who abandoned her newborn child and how it affected her life and those of others.
- Commentary:
- Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post, For searching and prescient columns on events leading up to the Gulf War and on the political problems of Mikhail Gorbachev.
- Criticism:
- David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times, For his critiques of the way in which the media, including his own paper, reported the McMartin Pre-School child molestation case.
- Editorial Writing:
- Editorial Cartooning:
- Spot News Photography:
- Greg Marinovich of Associated Press, For a series of photographs of supporters of South Africa's African National Congress brutally murdering a man they believed to be a Zulu spy.
- Feature Photography:
Commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and premiered by that orchestra on October 19, 1990.