The Daily Breeze on Monday won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for an investigative project into the Centinela Valley Union High School District, which exposed former Superintendent Jose Fernandez’s excessive salary and unusual perks as well as other serious issues within the district and its leadership.

• VIDEO: Michael Anastasi, vice president and executive editor of the Los Angeles News Group, celebrates Daily Breeze’s Pulitzer win

Journalism’s highest prize was given to Rob Kuznia, Rebecca Kimitch and city editor Frank Suraci of the Torrance-based Daily Breeze for their inquiry into widespread corruption in a small, cash-strapped school district. The Pulitzer announcement also credited impressive use of the paper’s website.

• VIDEO: See the announcement of the Daily Breeze’s Pulitzer Prize win

The Daily Breeze, one of nine daily newspapers of the Los Angeles News Group, also won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for community journalism, as well as the prestigious National Headliner Award for Investigative Reporting.

• THE INVESTIGATION: Read all of the Daily Breeze’s Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in the Centinela investigation

This is the first Pulitzer Prize for the Los Angeles News Group.

“Local news reporting is the very essence of the Daily Breeze and the entire Los Angeles News Group. It’s what we are determined to do better than anyone else,” said Michael Anastasi, vice president and executive editor of the Los Angeles News Group. “Today’s recognition is a testament especially to those honored today, to the entire staff of the Daily Breeze but also to the entire team because there were a lot of other journalists behind this success.”

Anastasi told a celebratory newsroom in Torrance that the Pulitzer win “speaks to the importance of our fundamental mission, which is covering local news. We are extraordinarily important to the communities that we serve.”

Ron Hasse, publisher and president of the Los Angeles News Group, told the Torrance gathering: “This is much bigger than a Pulitzer. The reward is what this team did: you uncovered the truth.”

Hasse added in a statement that because of the investigative reporting, “an impoverished school district is recovering from manipulative leadership that was inappropriately pocketing money which should have been used for the students and teachers. FBI investigations and criminal probes are still underway — and more importantly, new leadership is in place.”

“It’s about having an institution, no matter how small it is, that will support you,” said Kuznia, now a former Daily Breeze reporter. Kuznia had been covering schools for the paper for four years before he took a job with USC’s Shoah Foundation.

But he said the award represents what encouragement and support can do, even in the smallest of newsrooms.

“It is a testament to the importance of good old-fashioned beat reporting,” he said. “I couldn’t have done that story without everyone here. We have a tiny staff on the one hand, but everybody had the presence of mind to know we had a really good story.”

Kimitch, a reporter for the Los Angeles News Group, said she and staff were gratified to know they brought the abuses within the Centinela Valley Union district into the spotlight, and their reporting made a difference.

“The victories aren’t won on getting prizes, but the victory is bringing awareness to the communities,” Kimitch said.

Suraci said he was encouraged by Anastasi to put reporters onto the Centinela story full time, a move that was tough to do, given the size of the staff. But it paid off. He said Anastasi deserves credit for pushing him.

“It’s so hard, because we couldn’t do this today,” he said. “But we did a good thing for the community, not by winning an award, but by exposing something and shining a light under the rock. We knew we had a guy fleecing the public.”

Suraci, who has been at the Breeze for about 40 years, said the staff was taken aback by the win.

“It was unbelievable,” he said. “It feels really good.”

The online presentation of the coverage was also recognized by the Pulitzer committee.

The digital presentation aggregated all of the reporting and included a timeline that showed the progression of the superintendent’s rise to power. Online coverage included live tweeting and live blogging of meetings, documents, videos, curated lists and regular updates.

“It is our fundamental mission to provide the best possible experience and journalism to our readers on whatever platform they desire, be it print or the multitude of digital platforms on which we make our local news available,” Anastasi said.

The Los Angeles Times won two Pulitzers for its coverage of California’s drought and for cultural criticism. Staff writer Diana Marcum won the feature writing prize for her stories about farmers, fieldworkers and other Californians in drought-stricken towns in the Central Valley, while Times television critic and cultural editor Mary McNamara won for criticism.