Best of the Week — First Winner

Sources give AP tech team a beat on a critical Twitter story

Matt O'Brien and Barbara Ortutay anticipated that Elon Musk might disband Twitter's Trust and Safety Council, a group of external advisors who helped the platform with complicated content moderation -- and they broke the story as a result.

O'Brien, based in Providence, and New York-based Ortutay concluded after billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion that the trust council’s future was in doubt.

They kept contact with members of the group, which included around 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations, and noted the date when the council was next scheduled to meet.

When the council finally was disbanded via email, their multiple sources reached out with a copy, and AP was first with the story.

For foresight and source work that made the scoop possible, O’Brien and Ortutay are Best of the Week – 1st Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Trump and New York City: A battered love affair

prior to former President Donald Trump’s felony arraignment for allegedly falsifying business records, captured in a crackerjack of a story Trump’s love of the Empire State, from childhood to indictment, with humor and wit.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Nashville shooting shows how readers trust AP to stay informed when news breaks

reported on the killing of three 9-year-old pupils and three adults at a Presbyterian school in Nashville, the latest school shooting to traumatize the nation.Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Years of source work in Texas leads to power narrative enterprise story

Jake Bleiberg spent years reporting on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, including an investigation in September into the dropped cases. That story caught the attention of Irma Reyes, a South Texas mother, who reached out to Bleiberg to say that something similar was probably about to happen in the cases of two men charged with sex trafficking her daughter. Bleiberg checked sources and records and then headed to court, where he and Eric Gay witnessed Reyes’s worst fears come to pass.    

The resulting story became the most engaged story of the week on APNews. It also received extensive play across Texas and national media outlets, and won praise from elected officials critical of Paxton, as well as from prosecutors, and even a lawyer for one of the men accused in the case.    

For their compelling all-formats narrative story that put a human face on the dysfunction in Texas that led prosecutors to drop human trafficking and child sexual abuse cases, writer Jake Bleiberg, photographer Eric Gay and video journalist Lekan Oyekanmi are the first winners of this week’s Best of the Week award. 

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

How fun road trip to Mexico became days of horror

teamed up on reporting from both sides of the border as AP took readers through the harrowing journey of a group of childhood friends on a fun trip to Mexico that ended up in kidnapping and death.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP video team leads cross-format reporting of deadly migrant boat shipwreck

collaborated to cover one of the most tragic shipwrecks on Italian shores in recent years. Their quick and efficient response allowed AP to be the first international media to be on the ground, and their teamwork provided a great cross-format advantage, allowing media around the world highlight the tragedy. Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP team documents growth of landmines’ hidden toll in Myanmar

Months of reporting by Victoria Milko, David Rising and a colleague in Myanmar led to the most authoritative look yet at the problem of landmines in the country.

Their story recounted how a boy was maimed and teenagers killed. The team was also able to get military defectors and others in the country to share with AP how civilians are used as human shields and how groups reuse mines they claim to have cleared. The story demonstrates that this will be an issue in the country for years to come.

For their work documenting the horror of landmines in one of the world’s most isolated countries, we are honored to award Milko, our AP colleague in Myanmar and Rising this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Escape from Cuba and an odyssey to a new life in the US

collaborated to tell the story of two young adult Cuban sisters’ risky 4,200-mile journey to the United States and a new life.Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP scores exclusive interview with Pope Francis, making news worldwide with a papal call to decriminalize homosexuality

Vatican Correspondent Nicole Winfield's tenacious reporting has already delivered numerous exclusives over a two-decade career covering three popes. Yet an on-camera, sit-down interview with a pontiff had eluded the AP.

That changed dramatically Jan. 24. After years of lobbying, the pope sat down for an historic interview with Winfield, whom Francis has for years called the “prima della classe,” or “first in class,” as a sign of respect for her tough but fair reporting on his pontificate. In fact, during the interview, he mentioned how Winfield’s questions about sex abuse during a 2018 airborne press conference led to his “conversion” moment when he realized that Chilean bishops had been covering up cases of abuse for decades.

For weeks, Winfield prepared the interview with Rome Senior Producer Maria Grazia Murru, who for decades has led the Vatican video operations. They coordinated every detail and prepared the right questions and approach for the interview. Murru designed the video coverage plan and spearheaded the production of social media promotion material. And together, they wrote letters in the most formal Italian to Francis’ private secretaries, until a date was finally arranged — for late January, a time that seemed ripe to make news. It was one week ahead of his planned trip to Africa and just over a month ahead of the 10th anniversary of his pontificate.

Video’s Paolo Santalucia and Photos’ Domenico Stinellis planned the lighting at the venue and sorted out technical details, and photographer Andrew Medichini’s images captured the historic event. Spanish language editor Cristina Fuentes-Cantillana transcribed and translated the full interview, conducted in the pope’s native Spanish.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Local church helps Norwegian Arctic mining community evolve amid climate-change impact

provided an intimate and visually captivating portrait of the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard as its residents persevered through the round-the-clock polar night.

The AP team established a close rapport with the pastor in the community, joined the church’s children’s choir on a trip to a Russian/Ukrainian village, and spent a day at a century-old coal mine threatened with closure in two years. The trip had extra challenges for photo and video because it took place in mid-winter. For Cole, it meant developing a special sensitivity for light – from the glow of the aurora to the beam of a headlamp. Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Fast, sensitive coverage of Russian missile strike and its youngest victim

were quick to react when Russian missiles struck Vinnytsia in west-central Ukraine, killing 24.The strong all-formats coverage included interviews with survivors and the story of Liza Dmytrieva, a 4-year-old victim who was the subject of a video posted by her mother shortly before the missile strike. That poignant video went viral after the girl's death, and AP’s sensitive interview with the girl’s great-aunt earned the team access to Liza’s funeral.Powerful images of the family bent over Liza’s open coffin, and the accompanying text and video, were widely used — compelling coverage that brought home the suffering of innocent civilians.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exclusive AP analysis reveals pandemic learning setbacks

used AP’s exclusive access to the first district-by-district breakdown of pandemic test scores to report on massive learning setbacks during the pandemic.The pair, both members of AP’s Education team, previewed their analysis for AP members who could tailor their stories for local and statewide audiences — it was precisely that reach into local newsrooms around the U.S. that led researchers to share their data exclusively with AP.Lurye’s analysis required tremendous speed and accuracy, as data was delayed or updated on deadline. And Toness incisively summarized the national implications of the data: the scope of the pandemic’s disruption in kids’ lives, from the shortcomings of online learning to the trauma many American kids lived through, especially poor children.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

At the edge of the world, AP reports on resilient, defiant Alaska Native islanders facing climate change

More than 600 Inupiat Natives live in the village of Shishmaref, just a few miles from the Arctic Circle, watching climate change slowly shrink their small Alaskan island home. In early October, reporter Luis Andres Henao, video journalist Jessie Wardarski and photographer Jae Hong visited the village to document how the warming world inexorably threatens their way of life.

With advance outreach, and tactful overtures after their arrival, the journalists earned the trust of residents and civic leaders who have sometimes been wary of visitors. The ultimate result: a moving tribute to the villagers’ resilience and community spirit, rendered in striking visuals and poignant, insightful text.

The package — the first major look at how Shishmaref is determined to stay put as long as possible — earned prominent online display by major news outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including Spanish and French translations.

For an all-formats project vividly evoking the tenacity of a Native village threatened by climate change, the team of Henao, Wardarski and Hong is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Only on AP: No US-born Black players in the World Series

noticed at the 2005 World Series that the Houston Astros fielded a team without any U.S.-born Black players, prompting the AP baseball writer to wonder when he would cover a World Series without such a player on either team. The answer: 2022.Leaning on his previous reporting, reaching out to sources and working closely with Race and Ethnicity reporter Aaron Morrison for precise language about Black identity in baseball clubhouses, Walker and AP were alone in reporting that this year’s Astros-Phillies Fall Classic would be the first since 1950 without any U.S.-born Black players.In a World Series full of big names and rich storylines, Walker’s piece was undoubtedly the buzz of baseball in the days before Game 1. It was the top Google result for searches of “World Series,” “MLB” and “baseball” for several days, and it was cited widely even outside the sports world, by NPR, CNN and others.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP finds United Methodists losing hundreds of US congregations

used sources and reporting expertise developed over many years on the religion beat to explain that while the majority of United Methodist Church congregations aren’t breaking from the church over its bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages, hundreds of congregations have already left the denomination and hundreds more are preparing to leave.Smith’s piece was one of the most approachable narratives of this slow-motion exodus, offering both the nuance and clarity to engage those close to the Methodist church and those new to the story, and was was No. 5 on AP’s list of most-viewed stories for the week.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Joint reporting reveals hidden suspensions of students with disablities

set out to document ways students with disabilities are excluded from the classroom — and from learning. Their reporting led to advocates who described working with families whose children were essentially kept out of school, with none of the records that come with formal suspensions. The families claimed their schools couldn’t or wouldn’t accommodate their students’ disabilities — a violation of federal law — and said the practice had gotten worse during the pandemic.Ma, race and ethnicity reporter in Washington, partnered with Kolodner, of the nonprofit Hechinger Report, who had been pursuing the same topic. Together, they interviewed 20 families in 10 states, and a top Department of Education official. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Story of town employee who reduced fluoride in water goes national

teamed up on a story examining the controversy over a Vermont town employee who secretively reduced the fluoride in the town’s water supply for years.Rathke reported from the town’s water commission meeting and the trio fleshed out the story with background and context on the health benefits of fluoride and some of the persistent misinformation around it.The final story — among the most-viewed on AP News last week — used the small-town flare-up to tap into the larger interest in fluoride and offered yet another example of how misinformation is impacting even at a local level. It was also a textbook example of elevating a local story to one of interest nationally.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Standout coverage of mass shooting at rural Thailand day care center

coordinated with a cast of colleagues from Southeast Asia to Australia to London, delivering coverage impressive for its speed and scope after Thailand’s deadliest mass shooting — 36 people dead, most of them children, at a day care center in one of the county’s most remote areas. The ex-police officer responsible also killed his wife and child, and then killed himself.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP investigation finds dysfunction in Texas AG’s office

uncovered evidence of deep dysfunction inside Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, including criminal cases dropped and seasoned lawyers quitting over practices they say aim to slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.The investigation by Dallas-based Bleiberg, based on hundreds of pages of public and confidential records, data analysis and interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees, found numerous examples of an agency in disarray, including efforts to turn cases to political advantage, staff vacancies ballooning and, last month, a series of human trafficking and child sexual assault cases dropped after losing track of one of the victims.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Olympic gold medalist trusts AP with news of transition to male

made the AP one of only two news organizations trusted to interview and break the news of Ellia Green, a star on Australia’s 2016 gold medal-winning women’s sevens team, who has become rugby’s highest-profile player to transition to male. And AP was the only news outlet to get photos of Green and his family before the story went public.Trust established with the LGBTQ community over years by Sydney-based sports journalists Passa and Pye, and rapport built with Green, helped overcome his initial resistance to an interview and photographs. The resulting story, further elevated by Baker’s photos, won virtually all the play in Australia, appeared on major news sites in North America and Europe, and led sports coverage on AP’s own platforms.Read more