AP kicks off a series of national stories with a revealing road trip into rural Ohio, looking at the issues that exploded into the national consciousness this year.
Assignments don’t come much more challenging or ambitious: Take a road trip across the nation to see how Americans in different regions and are facing the confluence of COVID-19, economic meltdown, racial protests and a tumultuous presidential election. And this first installment came with high expectations, as it had to both launch the series and hold its own as a story. The team of Minneapolis-based enterprise reporter Tim Sullivan, New York enterprise photographer Maye-E Wong and Chicago video journalist Noreen Nasir came through beautifully.
The story draws attention to Ohio communities in the much-maligned Appalachian region, thoughtfully acknowledging both the truths and the enduring stereotypes so often associated with it. In particular, the piece showed us why the region feels even more isolated now – its residents see COVID-19 deaths and racial unrest from a distance, mostly on TV.
Tarah Nogrady collects water from a trough in Athens, Ohio, July 26, 2020. People have been using it for at least a century, since horses were watered and coal miners stopped to wash off grime and dust. They still come – some think the water is healthier, or makes better coffee, or because their utilities were turned off when they couldn’t pay the bills.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
An orange pickup truck sits on a lawn in Athens, Ohio, July 23, 2020. With the exception of the county of Athens, where Ohio University nurtures a more liberal electorate, the region is fiercely Republican.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Geoffrey West, 34, second from left, cuts the hair of customer Bayione Rogers, 22, at the Court Barbershop in Athens, Ohio, July 29, 2020. West, 34, runs the establishment serving the city’s Black community on the third floor of an old downtown office building. West likes Athens, and said he’s faced little direct racism since moving here three years ago. But he still believes there’s plenty of racial misunderstanding – among both Black and white people – and he joined one of the handful of recent protests in the region against police violence.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A Confederate flag hangs in the window of a young Black woman’s home in Shawnee, Ohio, July 28, 2020. The woman sat on the front porch of a battered house and angrily said it was her way of “giving the finger” to everyone, including white Southerners who believe they control the flag and its symbolism.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A cat stands outside a young Black woman’s home that flies a flag that is half Confederate and half American flag, in Shawnee, Ohio, July 28, 2020.
Tarah Nogrady collects water from a trough in Athens, Ohio, July 26, 2020. People have been using it for at least a century, since horses were watered and coal miners stopped to wash off grime and dust. They still come – some think the water is healthier, or makes better coffee, or because their utilities were turned off when they couldn’t pay the bills.
Abandoned shops line Main Street in Shawnee, Ohio, July 24, 2020, near abandoned homes, empty schools and boarded-up churches. Shawnee was a coal town that once boasted an opera house, a vaudeville theater, dozens of stores and plenty of taverns.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Christmas decorations lie scattered inside an abandoned shop, seen through its broken window in Shawnee, Ohio, July 24, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Cars are parked in front of a building with a banner reading “Hotel” in Shawnee, Ohio, July 26, 2020. Unemployment in the area skyrocketed to nearly 18 percent during the early virus shutdowns, doubling in some counties from March to April. While those rates have since come down, nearly every county in the region is still in worse shape than at the beginning of the year.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A boy rides his bicycle while a girl runs with her skateboard past abandoned storefronts in Shawnee, Ohio, July 24, 2020. Shawnee was a prosperous coal town, but Main Street is now little but one abandoned building after another.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A gas station employee takes a cigarette break in Shawnee, Ohio, July 26, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A woman and her daughter watch a drag race at the Perry State Fair in New Lexington, Ohio, July 24, 2020. Appalachian Ohio has some of the poorest counties in the state, with child poverty rates higher than 30%.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
People wait to ride a revolving swing at the Perry State Fair in New Lexington, Ohio, July 24, 2020. In the towns that speckle the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio, the pandemic has barely been felt – coronavirus deaths are mostly just images on TV from a distant America.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Visitors to the Perry State Fair walk past a food stand selling the “Wuhan Weiner,” in New Lexington, Ohio, July 24, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Brittany Cunningham 31, walks down the street with her nephew and his dog in Nelsonville, Ohio, July 24, 2020. Cunningham, a heroin addict, has been homeless for 10 years. Her stories range from from a life steeped in addiction and badly chosen boyfriends to a deep love for music.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Brittany Cunningham, 31, shows off her tattoo which reads, “Love Yourself” on her left forearm, in Nelsonville, Ohio, July 24, 2020. “Those are to hide the suicide scars,” she said.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Brittany Cunningham’s nephew eats a piece of cheesecake they received from a food pantry in Nelsonville, Ohio, July 24, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Brittany Cunningham 31, fills her suitcase with food donations, accompanied by her fiance in Nelsonville, Ohio, July 24, 2020. Brittany, a heroin addict, has been homeless for 10 years.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Car headlights shine down a dark road at dusk, in Athens, Ohio, July 26, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A Dollar General store sign stands along a street in Zanesville, Ohio, July 26, 2020. Often, the most crowded parking lots are at the ubiquitous Dollar General and Family Dollar stores, signposts of financial stress.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Larry Steele parks his truck outside his mother’s trailer home in New Marshfield, Ohio, July 28, 2020. Larry is a quiet man with a gravelly voice and armfuls of tattoos, a couple of them illegible because “the guy doing the tattoo was drunk.” A bout with COVID-19, including three weeks in the hospital, has left him rail thin.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In New Marshfield, Ohio, July 28, 2020, Larry Steele shows a photo of his son who died from a drug overdose.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Larry Steele looks for paw paw fruits in New Marshfield, Ohio, July 28, 2020. Steele and his partner, Penny Hudnall, survive by supplementing her disability payments with foraging in the woods for wild foods – walnuts, hickory nuts, paw paws, persimmons, spiceberries – and selling them to local farmers.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
The headlights of an abandoned car peek through an overgrowth of vines and shrubs in Rendville, Ohio, July 26, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
An outhouse stands behind a building in Rendville, Ohio, July 26, 2020. The toilets were still present in some towns until fairly recently and are becoming increasingly rare.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
A spotlight illuminates Donald Dutiel’s cowboy hat at the entrance to one of his homes on a ranch in New Lexington, Ohio, July 28, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
In Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020,Tasha Lamm, 30, holds a heart with the impressions of a footprint and handprint of her daughter who died 6 days after she was born. Lamm dreams of taking her family and leaving Ohio, the scene of so much personal pain: “I’m ready to leave this hellhole and everyone in it because I know there’s something better for me.”
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Tasha Lamm, 30, covers her face, becoming self-conscious while posing for a portrait, in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Tasha Lamm, 30, poses for a portrait in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Alicia Mullins, 22, poses for a portrait in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020. Mullins and her girlfriend Tasha Lamm were homeless for most of last year, living in a car before a local social service agency found them the home they’ve crowded with decorations, from a poster of a stained-glass Jesus rescued from the trash to a Winnie the Pooh snow globe.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Alicia Mullins, 22, looks through a cabinet of donated food as she makes dinner in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Tasha Lamm, 30, right, poses with her girlfriend, Alicia Mullins, 22, as they prepare dinner at their apartment in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Tasha Lamm, 30, right, poses with her girlfriend, Alicia Mullins, 22, and Lamm's sons, Donovyn, 8, left, and Gabriel Bonice, 7, in front of their home in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020. “It sucks being poor,” says Lamm who is raising her two sons on public assistance. A high-school dropout, she has been promising herself for years that she’d get her equivalency degree.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Gabriel Bonice, 7, left, and his brother Donovyn, 8, play with a garden hose in back of their home on a hot summer’s day in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Gabriel Bonice, 7, plays with the garden hose in front of a neighbor’s home on a hot summer’s day in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Donovyn Bonice, 8, jumps off his bed in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Donovyn Bonice, 8, plays with his dog Delilah on their back porch in Bidwell, Ohio, July 27, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
Signs of chain businesses stand against the dusk sky in Athens, Ohio, July 22, 2020.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
The package looked terrific, with powerful photos and video, and Samantha Shotzbarger handling the digital presentation. The story played extremely well over an extended period of time, even four days later carrying a remarkable average audience engagement of three minutes.
From left, AP’s Maye-E Wong, Tim Sullivan and Noreen Nasir in Athens, Ohio, July 23, 2020.
AP / Wong Maye-E
Praise was both internal and external. A senior editor called it “just a spectacular piece of journalism” and “some of the best work we've done this year.” Among the rewarding reactions from readers was this note: “The stories of the people there, their struggles, brought me to tears while reading your article. Thank you for writing such a beautiful piece.”
For compelling journalism in all formats that speaks to core issues impacting Americans in a turbulent year, the team of Sullivan, Wong and Nasir earns AP’s Best of the Week honors.
