WASHINGTON — The New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes yesterday, including one for uncovering the prostitution scandal that forced Eliot Spitzer to resign as New York governor.

The awards, administered by Columbia University, included seven arts prizes. Maui poet W.S. Merwin received his second Pulitzer for poetry, for "The Shadow of Sirius."

Merwin, who moved to Ha'iku in 1976 to study with a Zen Buddhist master, won for "The Carrier of Ladders" in 1971 but refused to accept the prize money in protest of the Vietnam War.

Scandal played a role in several of the journalism awards, including the local reporting prize to the Detroit Free Press for disclosing the steamy text messages to an aide that led to the resignation and jailing of the city's mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick.

Three Pulitzers were awarded for coverage of Barack Obama's historic election. But in a surprising turn, not one prize was handed out for the other big story of 2008 — the financial meltdown.

Smaller newspapers fared better than in previous years, with the Las Vegas Sun winning the public service award for reports on the high death rate among construction workers on the gambling capital's Strip.

Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, said that "in a year like this, with so many newspapers on the ropes," the prizes are "a reminder of the things newspapers can do that are very hard to report. ... Sadly, a diminishing pool of news organizations can afford to do it."