The all-formats package by Claire Galofaro, Brynn Anderson and Angie Wang focused on one county in southwestern Georgia, where the pandemic is hitting hardest among some of America’s most exposed, in this case rural blacks and the poor.
Finding people who have suffered devastating losses and getting them to talk is hard at the best of times; with this story, the team of global enterprise reporter Claire Galofaro, photographer Brynn Anderson and video journalist Angie Wang also had to cope with the logistical and safety challenges of reporting in a pandemic. They bleached their hotel rooms and cars routinely. They wore masks almost always. They took their temperatures in parking lots. They navigated how to connect with their sources enough to solicit the emotional context needed while also maintaining a safe distance.
An empty road leads into the rural countryside of Dawson, Ga., April 17, 2020. Other out-of-the way places, unscathed so far by the pandemic, might believe as many in Dawson once did, that the virus won't find them. But ambulances rushed along country roads here, past fields and farms, carrying COVID-19 patients to the nearest hospital, for some an hour away.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Morticians and funeral attendants, from left, Ronald Costello, Robert L. Albritten, Cordarial O. Holloway and Eddie Keith wait for the end of a funeral at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Dawson. Ga., April 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Mortician Cordarial O. Holloway wears a protective mask after a funeral at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
The Rev. Willard O. Weston Sr. of Sardis Baptist Church in Dawson, Ga., reacts to a phone call in which he learned of another COVID-19 death. “Who? Man, no. Oh, wow, OK. Alright, I'll call you back. Some more bad news, somebody else has passed,” said Weston, April 17, 2020. He'd found himself on his knees in his bathroom, trying to scream out the sadness so he could keep going. “At this pace, you don’t get a chance to really take a deep breath from the previous death, and then you're getting a call about another,” he said. “I've had some moments over the last two or three weeks, and I've questioned the good Lord: What is this? How can we continue?”
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Downtown Dawson, Ga., is reflected in the window of a local barber shop where a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. is on display, April 17, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
From left, Erick Brown, Saundra Brown and George Savage stand on their porch in Dawson, Ga., while wearing protective masks amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, April 17. 2020. By nearly every measure, COVID-19 patients in this patch of southwestern Georgia are faring worse than almost anywhere else in the country, according to researchers at Emory University in Atlanta.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A man wearing a protective mask rides a bicycle down an empty street in Dawson, Ga., amid the coronavirus outbreak, April 17, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A downtown street corner in Dawson, Ga., is reflected in the window of a shop with the remnants of a past baby shower, April 17, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
The Rev. Ezekiel Holley, 78, of Dawson, Ga., a leader of the NAACP, looks from behind the office door window while wearing a protective mask amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, April 19, 2020. At first Holley thought a virus would be one thing that did not discriminate. “Then I thought, why are low income people and people of color dying more than anyone else? This is the richest nation in the world, why doesn’t it have a level playing field?” he said. "Tell me that."
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Rev. Ezekiel Holley, 78, a leader of the NAACP, adjusts his hat and wears a protective mask inside the NAACP office in Dawson, Ga., amid the COVID-19 virus outbreak, April 19, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
The Terrell County Courthouse glows near downtown Dawson, Ga., April 17, 2020. Of the 20 counties with the highest death rates in America during the coronavirus outbreak, six of them are in rural southwest Georgia, where there are no packed skyrise apartment buildings or subways.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
An illuminated cross stands in front of a residence near downtown Dawson, Ga., April 17, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Writing fades from a window display of a local clothing store in Dawson, Ga., April 17, 2020, showing an “Everything must go” sale.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A tattered U.S. flag whips in a heavy wind in Dawson, Ga., April 19, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Outside of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Ga., chaplain Will Runyon holds back tears as he speaks of the hardship and death wrought by the COVID-19 outbreak, April 20, 2020. “There’s so much death right now, it piles up on you, it feels heavy,” Runyon said. He can feel it in his back, in his feet, like he's dragging something invisible behind him. “It’s happening so often, over and over, everyday.”
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A wooden cross made from a tree stump, known by some locals as a symbol of hope, sits outside of Phoebe Putney Memorial hospital in Albany, Ga., April 20, 2020. The region is predominantly black, but even so, African Americans died disproportionally, said Phoebe Putney Memorial's chief executive officer Scott Steiner. The patients have been very sick – some died within hours. Some died on the way to the hospital, in the back of ambulances.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Eugene Davis kneels into a grave at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Dawson, Ga., to check the depth before a funeral for Judge Brooks Jr., April 18, 2020. Across the Terrell County, as this state and others rush to throw open the doors on restaurants and stores, those here describe themselves as a cautionary tale of what happens when the virus seeps into American's most vulnerable communities, quietly at first then with breathtaking savagery.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
From left, Willie Johnson, Horace Bell and Eugene Davis lower a burial vault into a grave at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Funeral attendant Ronald Costello places his gloved hands over a blanket intended for a family member of the deceased, Judge Brooks Jr., at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Funeral attendant Eddie Keith poses for a portrait dressed in a suit and tie in Dawson, Ga., April 19, 2020. Keith has worked at Albritten’s Funeral Service for around 35 years and was the person to retrieve the body of his pastor, who died of COVID-19. They'd known each other 30 years. Once, years ago, Keith had complimented his pastor’s necktie. After that, every time the pastor bought himself a tie, he bought Keith one too – it became a symbol of their love for each other. Keith feels like he lost a brother. “Why God? Why God? Why God?” Keith thought as he retrieved his pastor and friend.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Cousins Latasha Taylor, left, and Desmond Tolbert are interviewed in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020. Both have been affected by the COVID-19 deaths of Nellie “Pollye Ann” Mae and Benjamin Tolbert. “Burying both your parents, I ain't never want nobody to go through that. Burying both parents at the same time? It's hard,” says Desmond.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Desmond Tolbert, 29, of Dawson, Ga., walks alone through the hallway of his parents’ home, where he also lives, April 18, 2020, after both his parents, Nellie “Pollye Ann” Mae and Benjamin Tolbert died a few days apart from COVID-19. Desmond was on the phone with a nurse as his mother took her last breath. Two days later, the same call came from his father’s caregivers. The only solace he can find is imagining them meeting again on the other side, and that neither has to be without the other.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
Latasha Taylor shows the death certificate of her aunt, Nellie “Pollye Ann” Mae Tolbert, in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020, pointing to the cause of death being acute viral pneumonia due to COVID-19. “Oh my goodness, she was a dancer, and the dances were so hilarious, you would just fall out laughing watching her dance and laugh at herself,” Taylor said.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A collection of Nellie “Pollye Ann” Mae Tolbert’s belongings sits atop her dresser in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020. Both she and her husband, Benjamin Tolbert, died days apart due to COVID-19.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
A pair of chairs belonging to Nellie “Pollye Ann” Mae and Benjamin Tolbert, who both died days apart due to COVID-19, sit in their bedroom in Dawson, Ga., April 18, 2020.
AP Photo / Brynn Anderson
The journalists knew they would have to take cautious risks to tell this important story. But they also had to deal with the emotional and ethical issues of potentially putting the people they spoke to in danger. They spent much of their time on the ground trying to sort out how to best protect their sources, while also getting a story worthy of the risk those sources were taking to tell it.
Galofaro also worked with data journalist Meghan Hoyer to get data that would show a snapshot of Terrell County, Georgia, that served as both background for the story and information for a graphic. The story rose to the top of the charts in pageviews for all AP stories, with high reader engagement.
We also heard from people all over the country who said the story had moved them. Some said it made the pandemic finally feel real, because through the eyes of our subjects, they saw what they couldn’t see through their own. Many said it inspired them to do something: to help the families involved or become active in changing the underlying cultural disparities that allowed this devastation to take root. David Kirsten, in Leesburg Va., wrote: “Yours is the type of writing that causes me to go to the AP first for my news … Bravo and keep up the great work!” Bob Liff, who identifies himself as a former reporter, wrote: “Read your devastating, heartbreaking and beautiful homage to lives lost in SW Georgia. Just wanted to tell you. You honor them and journalism.”
Perhaps the most surprising tribute came from an unexpected source: Global enterprise editor Marjorie Miller’s sister. She called Marjorie to talk about a story her husband read aloud to her that made her cry, quoting chapter and verse from it. She had no idea it was an AP story.
For a significant, poignant all-formats package that reveals in personal terms the already deep inequities exploited by the the pandemic, Galofaro, Anderson and Wang are recognized with this week’s Best of the States award.
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– One Good Thing: daily stories of hope and humanity amid the crisis.
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