A southern US newspaper took the prestigious Pulitzer prize in public service on Monday for an investigation into the appalling extent of domestic abuse against women and the state's failure to intervene.

The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, produced a seven part series, Till Death Do Us Part. It was a collaborative effort by four journalists: Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Natalie Caula Hauff.

"You're seeing real convergence and real great use of a variety of tools by legacy newspapers and online sites," Mike Pride, Pulitzer Prize administrator, said.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch photography staff received the breaking news photography award for their "powerful images of the despair and anger in Ferguson, Missouri," following the death of Michael Brown.

The fatal shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old black teenager by a white policeman sparked months of protests, and severe rioting.

Bloomberg News received their first Pulitzer prize this year for an explanatory piece by journalist Zachary Mider. The piece explained how US lawmakers and regulators have a hard time stopping corporations from dodging taxes.

Writer Anthony Doerr received the Pulitzer for fiction for his book All the Light We Cannot See, a novel inspired by World War II.

The Pulitzer committee awarded 22 Pulitzer prizes in journalism, music, drama, history, fiction, poetry and history. The winners were selected from 64 finalists.

Each of the award recipients receives a 10,000-dollar prize, but only the winner of the public service category receives a gold medal. All winners' biographies and photos are available on the Pulitzer website.

Monday's Pulitzers were the 99th time that Columbia University in New York awarded top journalists and writers. The award is named after journalist and publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the now defunct New York World newspaper in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and who helped establish the Columbia Journalism School.

Last year, the Washington Post and Guardian won Pulitzers for their coverage of National Security Agency surveillance programmes, based on documents provided by US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.