Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats package explores little-known world of intersex children

for delving into the world of intersex children by winning the trust of a family to tell of their struggles and triumphs in raising two such children who share male and female traits. The all-formats package brought understanding of a condition unfamiliar to most people, and perhaps empathy for the family’s children, as well as a conflicted father and a mother who wants to share her learned experience.https://bit.ly/2WJtKrahttps://bit.ly/2RgOmkC

Best of the States

A century after hundreds of black killings, AP explores the enduring impact of ‘Red Summer’

While conducting research for another potential project, Jesse J. Holland, race and ethnicity reporter based in Washington, read about the upcoming anniversary of the “Red Summer” of 1919 and noticed a startling fact: Few people seemed to know that more than 200 African Americans died at the hands of white rioters across the country 100 years ago. The stream of violence that stretched from February to October that year, most of it in the U.S. South and Northeast, eluded history books and was largely forgotten.

Holland presented the information to the larger team, and the project took flight. The all-formats series ultimately included work by staffers Cedar Attanasio, El Paso, Texas; Russell Contreras, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Noreen Nasir, Chicago; and Rodrique Ngowi, Boston. AP was largely alone in its coverage and the team’s efforts were rewarded with prominent use by national outlets and strong engagement.

For taking a little-known event and turning it into a dynamic project with powerful historic and present-day context that no other news outlet could match, Attanasio, Contreras, Holland, Nasir and Ngowi win this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Only on AP: Intimate, compelling all-formats coverage of Congo’s deadly Ebola outbreak

It’s a story so dangerous that the journalists who covered it are still checking their temperatures regulary to ensure that they’re not infected with one of the world’s most lethal diseases. Yet AP’s all-formats journalists helped tell intimate stories about the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history.

The team – Johannesburg Chief Photographer Jerome Delay, West Africa Bureau Chief Krista Larson, Istanbul video journalist Bram Janssen and Congo stringer Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro – had been planning since April to report on the outbreak in Congo, a journey complicated not only by risk of the disease but also the threat of rebel attacks. And their story took on even greater urgency when the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a world health emergency.

Readers, and editors, around the world took notice as the team produced a series of compelling stories from the epicenter of the outbreak.

For careful planning and execution of multiformat coverage that brought the frightening outbreak to a deeply personal level, Larson, Delay, Janssen and Kudra win AP’s Best of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Unique, enterprising video stories win Tour de France viewers

for a series of nearly 20 videos from the Tour de France, using iPhone and GoPro to create short-form, customer-ready products. The videos drove traffic to their comprehensive text coverage of the race itself as well as “Taste of the Tour,” their daily series of entertaining, informative and entirely exclusive cross-format stories exploring the people, places, cuisine and hidden tales in the regions crossed by the Tour. They shot video and interviews in the early morning, before starting long days covering each stage, then edited their video stories in the car as they drove hundreds of miles to the stage finish, where they then leapt back into race coverage. On Twitter alone, the video series racked up close to 300,000 views, more than covering the pair’s modest wine tab.https://bit.ly/2yvemQshttps://bit.ly/2Ktu58Dhttps://bit.ly/2SUr7O2https://bit.ly/2K9dvMihttps://bit.ly/2YvHXbj

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP hours ahead as Trump moves to end nearly all asylum at southern border

Washington-based homeland security reporter Colleen Long earned a key scoop – one that set the news agenda for days and left the competition scrabbling to catch up – when a source alerted her to a change in rules for those seeking asylum at the southern border: The rule would effectively end asylum for people coming from Central American countries and change decades of U.S. policy.

Following the tip, she also knew that she had a window of opportunity to drive her advantage home before the law was announced early the next morning. Long’s story caught other news organizations completely off guard and left major outlets to cite the AP for hours as they struggled to catch up.

For her deep knowledge of immigration policy, diligent reporting and outstanding speed of delivery on a story of vital interest, Colleen Long earns AP’s Best of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

In rural Ohio, the personal stories behind opioid prescription data

for their deadline all-formats report that put a human face on the release of millions of prescription painkiller sales records. They told the stories of people directly affected by the epidemic in Jackson County, Ohio, a rural Appalachian community that received 107 prescription painkillers per person per year at the height of the crisis, according to the data. https://bit.ly/32uXxDjhttps://bit.ly/2YxFSMd

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Monthlong all-formats coverage of Stonewall anniversary

for a month’s worth of thoughtful all-formats coverage marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and what was believed to be the largest LGBTQ celebration in history, culminating in a Pride parade that lasted 12 1/2 hours. https://www.apnews.com/Stonewallat50

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

After newspaper tragedy, a city embraces its journalists

for a nuanced story of a community coming together to support their local newspaper, the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, in the year since a mass shooting killed five people at the paper. The paper’s surviving staff are recommitted to covering the community, using their craft to work through their trauma, while subscriptions have surged and random readers hug reporters on the job, Witte reported. https://bit.ly/2RPdkrw

Best of the Week — First Winner

Searing photo of migrant drownings launches all-formats AP coverage across borders

When New York photo editor Pablo Salinas alerted colleagues to the image of a drowned father and daughter from El Salvador lying face-down in the Rio Grande after they tried to cross into Texas, it was clear it captured, like few other images, the dangers faced by migrants and asylum-seekers trying to make it to the United States.

AP’s much-applauded decision to acquire and publish that image by freelance reporter Julia Le Duc, showing the stark and often-hidden reality of migrants dying by the hundreds each year along the U.S. border, showcased AP’s significant role in shaping the news agenda.

It also stands as a lesson for AP staff with several important takeaways, highlighting the role of editors to find, gather and acquire important images for AP’s global audience, the role of AP’s Top Stories Hub to coordinate and amplify news stories, and the value of rapid response by journalists in the region to verify, report and provide context for any news-making picture.

Finally, it showed how the thoughtful implementation of AP’s standards across all platforms and social media can allow AP to stand out.

For an exceptional multinational effort in finding, recognizing and acquiring Le Duc’s tragic and important image, and presenting it to AP’s worldwide audience with context and sensitivity, the team of Pablo Salinas, Marcos Alemán, Eduardo Verdugo, Rebecca Blackwell, Chris Sherman, Gerardo Carrillo and Peter Orsi shares AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

AP: Smoke from US wildfires boosting health risk for millions

After last year's deadly wildfires in California brought weeks of sooty skies to cities along the West Coast, the AP decided to take a closer look into the broader impacts of the massive smoke plumes.

Billings, Montana, correspondent and environment team member Matthew Brown teamed with Denver video journalist P. Solomon Banda to produce an all-formats report on the growing public health threat from wildfire smoke. Their work grew from a body of research that points to where smoke impacts will be worst – a broad swath of the West that includes more than 300 counties with tens of millions of people.

For diligent reporting that provided a deeper look into how wildfires affect communities throughout the region, Brown and Banda earn this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Impressive all-formats response to Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday bombings

It was a merciless attack in a part of the world not immediately associated with Islamic extremism. But what was behind the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka that killed more than 300 people, and why did the government fail to stop it despite early warnings?

Getting images and news out to the world was a monumental task, but one that AP reporters, photographers and videojournalists took on with tremendous skill and dedication.

The initial reporting came from the Colombo-based team of reporters Krishan Francis and Bharatha Mallawarachi and photographer Eranga Jayawardena. They were backed by correspondent Emily Schmall in Delhi, who would join them, breaking news with a live interview of the prime minister.

Local stringer Jay Palipane shot the first video, reinforced by Delhi-based videojournalists Shonal Ganguly and Rishabh Jain, who joined Palipane in providing hours of live coverage.

Bangkok-based Sri Lankan photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe flew in, covering intimate moments of grieving relatives, soon to be joined by Delhi-based Manish Swarup who produced a moving photo essay from one of the attack sites.

Other highlights included coverage of a raid on militants and an Only on AP story about the first post-attack church service by Gulf News Director Jon Gambrell. Seoul Chief of Bureau Foster Klug examined the little-known local terror cell behind the attack.

Play was tremendous in all formats as the world remained fixated on the continuously developing story.

For their outstanding work in the face of stiff challenges, the team of Francis, Mallawarachi, Jayawardena, Palipane, Schmall, Ganguly, Jain, Amarasinghe, Gambrell, Swarup and Klug wins this week’s Best of the AP.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

A touching return to Paradise for first graduating class after wildfire

for a moving story about the first high school graduation for students of Paradise, California, since last year’s monstrous wildfire that left their town in ashes and killed 85 people. Of the school’s 980 students, about 900 lost their homes.https://bit.ly/2IEeIJnhttps://bit.ly/2MNq5Eg

Best of the States

APNewsBreak: Navy reassigns unconventional war college head after AP reveals probe

“... Due to the distractions caused by the unfounded AP article last week, I am stepping down as President of YOUR college effective immediately.”

Rear Admiral Jeffrey Harley, head of the elite U.S. Naval War College, pushed the button on that all-staff missive Monday after the Navy announced it was reassigning him in the wake of exclusive reporting by Jennifer McDermott and Michelle R. Smith – reporting that produced two APNewsBreaks in 72 hours.

Their first NewsBreak moved Friday, confirming the military was investigating allegations that Harley spent excessively, abused his hiring authority and otherwise behaved inappropriately, including keeping a margarita machine in his office. Three days later, the AP team was first again with word that the Navy was removing Harley from his post pending the outcome of its probe.

Both stories gained huge traction with customers and on social media. The scoops by McDermott’s and Smith were “just the tip of the iceberg,” one source said, and they’ve since led to new tips.

For dogged and diligent reporting that exposed questionable leadership at the heart of the Navy’s brain trust, McDermott and Smith win this week’s Best of the States prize.

Best of the States

Teamwork and drone visuals lead coverage after tornadoes rip western Ohio

There’s a real difference between straight aerial photography and the bird’s-eye view that AP’s audience had of the destruction after a series of tornados touched down in western Ohio late on Memorial Day. Using a drone, Cincinnati photographer John Minchillo and video journalist Angie Wang provided those images from a rare perspective – both still photos and video – showing residents coping with the wreckage and sorting through their gutted homes.

The resulting video coverage was our overall top U.S. video story for the week, and Minchillo’s still photos were widely played, including front pages of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Two of his photos appeared in NBC’s The Week in Pictures.

From small details to sweeping landscapes of destruction, their dedication, teamwork and speed of delivery make John Minchillo and Angie Wang this week’s Best of the States winners.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Reporting on border graveyards prompts change in wall construction

for a story on two 19th-century cemeteries that stood in the way of the president’s border wall. The Trump administration had refused to give specifics about its plans for the cemeteries, but after the story, including interviews with family members of people buried there, the administration shifted course, avoiding the graveyards in the wall construction project. https://bit.ly/2QNsxJe

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Dozens of compulsive gamblers interviewed on sportsbook ads

for a thoroughly reported story on the struggles that compulsive gamblers have with burgeoning sportsbook advertising. Parry’s credibility – and meticulous, grinding beatwork – helped him earn the trust of more than 50 people with gambling problems, gaining insights rarely seen in betting stories. The results not only enhanced the story on betting ads, it set AP up for future stories that the sports gambling team is working on related to broader issues of gambling addiction. https://bit.ly/2QNmhRF

Best of the Week — First Winner

Sky-high reporting and smart use of all formats puts AP ahead amid Persian Gulf tensions

As tensions between Iran, its neighbors and the United States ratcheted up last week, AP’s staff in Baghdad, Dubai and Tehran turned out aggressive, yet cautious coverage, bringing facts and unique perspectives to the tense and escalating situation in the Persian Gulf, often well ahead of the competition.

Those stories included reports of “sabotaged” oil tankers off the coast of the UAE, and AP broke the news that Iran had quadrupled its uranium enrichment.

Meanwhile, AP’s Tehran team produced an all-formats piece on the mood of people on the city’s streets that could not be matched by competitors, and AP was first to report an FAA warning that Iran could misidentify commercial flights in the region.

AP was also aggressive on related developments, ensuring that clients had video and text coverage of tweets by President Donald Trump and Iranian officials.

For smart judgment, planning and effective use of AP’s resources to break news and bring facts to a region on edge, the team of Jon Gambrell, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Mehdi Fattahi, Bassem Mroue, Nasser Karimi and Vahid Salemi wins AP's Best of the Week, with the support of their colleagues and contributors in the region.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Immigration team finds 13,000 immigrants on wait lists in Mexico to cross the border

for all-format reporting across the U.S.-Mexico border, revealing that 13,000 immigrants are stuck in Mexico on haphazard wait lists that have formed as the Trump administration placed limits on how many asylum cases it accepts each day. The team visited the eight main locations where lines were forming and tallied the number of people on the various lists, finding some migrants sleeping in tents for months on end, vulnerable to violence and shakedowns. And they broke news about a family that decided to forgo the long line and cross illegally, killing four people as they were swept away by the swift-moving Rio Grande. https://bit.ly/2Q4dF8Y

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Sharp, quick coverage of fatal Russian jetliner fire

for reacting quickly to the news Sunday night that a plane had caught fire on landing at Sheremetevo Airport in Moscow, killing 41 people. Highlighting a strong visual report, AP obtained the first dramatic user-generated video of the plane in flames, ahead of other western agencies and garnering huge client usage. https://bit.ly/306CgOZ

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP offers insight on proposed application fee for asylum seekers

for demonstrating AP’s geographic reach with an insightful take on the Trump administration’s plan to charge asylum seekers an application fee. While other news organizations dutifully reported on the proposed fee, the AP team was on the ground talking to the people it would impact. https://bit.ly/2Y8Ye20