NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times each won two coveted Pulitzer Prizes for journalism on Monday, and for the first time no award was given for breaking news coverage.

The Los Angeles Times, whose publisher Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy in 2008, won the public service award for exposing corruption in the Californian city of Bell where officials paid themselves large salaries.

The coverage led to arrests and reforms.

Los Angeles Times photographer Barbara Davidson was awarded the feature photography Pulitzer for her pictures of bystanders trapped in the cross-fire of Los Angeles gang violence.

The New York Times' Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry won in the international reporting category for putting "a human face on the faltering justice system in Russia, remarkably influencing the discussion inside the country."

David Leonhardt of The New York Times won the commentary Pulitzer for "his graceful penetration of America's complicated economic questions, from the federal budget deficit to health care reform."

The Pulitzer Prizes prizes honor journalism, books, drama and poetry and are awarded annually by the Pulitzer Prize Board at New York City's Columbia University. Each winner receives $10,000.

For the first time no prize was awarded for breaking news.

Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said there had been 25 other occasions when awards were not given in some categories.

"The board does not discuss or debate specific decisions, the awards are supposed to basically speak for themselves," Gissler told a news conference.

Many U.S. newspapers including the Los Angeles Times have faced financial strain in recent years as a result of dwindling advertising revenue and increasing Internet readership.

ProPublica, a nonprofit organization which last year became the first online news service to win a Pulitzer Prize, took home the national reporting award for Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein' exposure of questionable practices on Wall Street that contributed to the U.S. economic downturn.

The Wall Street Journal's Joseph Rago won the prize for editorial writing that challenged "the health care reform advocated by President Obama," and The Washington Post's Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti won the breaking news photography award for their work after the Haiti earthquake.

Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune won the investigative reporting prize for her examination of weaknesses in the property insurance system vital to Florida homeowners.

Amy Ellis Nutt of The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J., won the feature writing award for her story of the mysterious sinking of a commercial fishing boat that killed six men.

Author Jennifer Egan won the fiction prize for "A Visit from the Goon Squad," Bruce Norris picked up the drama award for "Clybourne Park" and Siddhartha Mukherjee was awarded the nonfiction prize for "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer."

(Additional reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr., editing by Laura MacInnis)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA divided up more than $269 million on Monday among several companies vying to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, the space agency said.

Boeing received $92.3 million and privately held Sierra Nevada Corp got $80 million, NASA said.

Space Exploration Technology, the privately held company founded by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, was awarded $75 million. The company, also known as SpaceX, is considering an initial public offering next year, Musk recently said.

Blue Origin, founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, received a contract worth $22 million.

The companies were competing for the next round of funding in NASA's Commercial Crew Development program.

The program is aimed at developing a U.S. commercial alternative to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the U.S. space shuttles are retired later this year.

The United States has already turned over flights to Russia at a cost of $51 million per person. The price is expected to increase to $63 million in 2014.

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

"These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration."

The companies chosen for the program came from a pool of 22, Philip McAlister, acting director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA, told reporters during a conference call.

"At this stage of the game, competition is a very important part of our strategy," McAlister said. "We also believe that having skin in the game is important."

In addition to government funds, the companies will be expected to invest their own resources, a shift from how the United States has developed spacecraft in the past.

The agreement covers work for about 14 months. NASA hopes to follow the program with another competition to develop an actual flight system. The goal is for NASA to be able to buy commercial orbital space transportation services by about 2015.

Those losing out on NASA funding included Orbital Sciences Corp, Alliant Techsystems and United Space Alliance. Orbital Sciences has contracts to fly cargo for NASA. Alliant Techsystems proposed a new rocket based on the space shuttle booster, and United Space Alliance had sought funds to study if the shuttles could be flown commercially instead of being retired.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; editing by Jane Sutton and Kevin Gray)