The Pulitzer Prize winners announced Monday included, as usual, many of the largest news organizations with their huge reporting staffs and deep editing. Small organizations, most of them nonprofit startups, were well-represented too, as is detailed elsewhere in Poynter’s coverage.

For-profit metro newspapers and their digital sites, on the other hand, long a significant presence in capturing journalism’s highest honors, were virtually shut out.

They did not have a winner and placed just six finalists in the 15 journalism categories. Off years can happen in unpredictable fashion in the Pulitzer judging process, as the initial juries work independently and balance is not a consideration. But it is hard not to see the constantly worsening financial plight of the metros stripping them of capacity to do the very best work.

Last year’s prize list included two for Advance Local’s Al.com, one in Local Reporting for a series on police corruption, the other in Commentary for columns on how Confederate heritage continues to contribute to current racism in the state. Eight finalists were metro organizations.

For another comparison, I checked the prize list from 10 years ago. Five winners were metros, which also garnered 14 finalist mentions. Local nonprofits, then a tiny group compared to the hundreds now, were not represented at all. (For these statistics, I have excluded the Los Angeles Times, the largest of the regionals with national and international presence. It has had winners or finalists this year and in 2014 and 2023).

Next year could be different and better for the metros, but I see the results as a persuasive snapshot of who has momentum and who has lost it.

WATCH: Breaking down the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes with Poynter

The New York Times and The Washington Post are resource-rich, some might argue raiding metros even more than they used to for talent while pursuing a digital subscription strategy that drains potential paid subscribers from the metros.

The Times is notable for being able to quickly deploy impressive team coverage to war zones like Gaza. The Post seems to have a particular knack for the deep dive reports it calls Deep Reads, on which writers can spend months or sometimes more than a year assembling information.

The wire services — The Associated Press and Reuters — also have deep numbers and quality of staff, worldwide in scope. For 2024, each won one of the two photography categories.

Some of the largest and oldest nonprofits have developed well-honed ways to tackle big stories. ProPublica won the contest’s top prize, for Public Service; KFF Health News, The Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project were finalists for other awards.

Metros, to state the obvious, are often a shadow of what they were in the last century and even during the first 15 of this one, as they began to shrink. Stories about the decline in local news are often framed as newspapers closing or devolving into “ghost” newsrooms. That’s true, and a terrible thing. But in the numbers of potential readers being served, degraded metros may be the bigger issue.

Coming this summer: A Poynter report on the state of the news.

The future for surviving newspaper organizations is certainly digital. For right now, though, legacy print typically remains half or more as a revenue source. So those outlets are stuck with the cost of printing and especially distribution. That leaves less money to invest in an attractive digital report and ambitious investigations.

Nonprofits ignore building business functions at their peril, but even so they can still put a higher percentage of spending into journalism, unburdened by print. One strategy that works for a nonprofit’s launch is giving a small staff of 10 or so a specific focus. Advocacy is an accepted alternative to the legacy traditions of objectivity. Those two characteristics ease the path to high-impact projects.

The metros that were recognized this year included Gannett’s The Tennessean and McClatchy’s Miami Herald. Others were the independent Chattanooga Times Free Press, the independent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the independent Villages (Florida) Daily Sun and Stat, a science reporting affiliate of The Boston Globe.

I want to be hopeful that the metros will do better a year from now as the long look for a new business model finds traction. Four months into 2024, however, their finances appear to be as bad or worse.

More from Poynter on the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes:

• Lookout Santa Cruz, digital site with a backstory, wins Pulitzer for breaking news
• Small newsrooms won big in the 2024 Pulitzers
• The Invisible Institute won two Pulitzers this year. What is it?
• A sign of the times as Pulitzer Prizes are announced
• Pulitzers recognize coverage of Israel-Hamas war, honor journalists working in Gaza
• Reuters wins Pulitzer for Israel-Gaza photography
• A rare illustrated look into Rikers wins a Pulitzer
• Associated Press wins Pulitzer for documenting arduous migration journeys 
• Here are the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes
• From the archives: Behind the Pulitzers: A look into the inner workings of journalism’s Super Bowl
• From the archives: How do you pronounce Pulitzer?