Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

COVID surge overwhelms a Louisiana hospital; AP is there

produced a timely, moving, all-formats story from a Louisiana COVID-19 ward with a lightning turnaround, getting her video, text and photos to the wire the day after she spent hours at the hospital.Plaisance, New Orleans-based video journalist, was given access to a hospital intensive care unit in Jefferson, Louisiana, expecting to get a few comments and some b-roll. Instead, she ended up spending the most of the day there, interviewing exhausted staff and recovering COVID victims. She spoke to a doctor who was emptying garbage bins and bathing patients to relieve the pressure on nurses. She spoke to a nurse who lost his own father to COVID, and a patient — also a nurse — who didn't get vaccinated and wants to make sure others don’t follow her lead.After leaving the hospital, Plaisance immediately went to work cutting video and writing the text story. By the following afternoon her work was on the wire capturing the desperation and urgency at the hospital.The package drew attention amid the current spike in COVID cases. Other news outlets noticed: After Plaisance’s piece appeared, the hospital became the subject of other reporters’ coverage.https://aplink.news/e0uhttps://aplink.video/p2n

Best of the Week — First Winner

Sensitive reporting, compelling storytelling on spike in Zimbabwe teen pregnancy amid pandemic

Writing about teen pregnancy is difficult under any circumstances, requiring equal parts thoughtfulness and responsibility. That is how AP’s team in Zimbabwe, photographer Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi and writer Farai Mutsaka, joined by South Africa video journalist Sebabatso Mosamo, approached the story of how pandemic lockdowns led to a sharp rise in teen pregnancies and the consequent loss of girls’ educational opportunities, a problem affecting many southern African countries.

Gathering facts to support the story took months, as Mutsaka worked with officials to access the available data. Then the team faced the challenge of finding families willing to speak on the record. Most wouldn't talk publicly, but Mukwazhi and Mutsaka found a 13-year-old who wanted her story told. The pair repeatedly explained the possible consequences to her family and others they met with, ensuring the story’s subjects fully understood what it meant to have their names and photos published.

The months of care and persistence paid off with compelling text and images, including a sensitive video by Mosamo. For responsible coverage providing insight into a difficult, important and often painful subject, the team of Mutsaka, Mukwazhi and Mosamo is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Moving all-formats coverage captures holidays in French ICU

used contacts he’s built over the past 18 months to secure unique access to an intensive care unit in Marseille, France, documenting how staff, patients and their families were coping during the holidays. His work was front and center of AP’s coronavirus coverage over the holiday period.Freelance photographer Cole spent Christmas and New Year's in La Timone Hospital as medical staff cared for COVID patients and celebrated with their colleagues, not with their loved ones. He also captured intimate moments as family members visited patients.But beyond the outstanding still images, Cole was reporting in all formats: His text piece perfectly complemented the photos, while his Only on AP video saw prominent usage by AP customers in France and internationally.https://aplink.photos/5p5https://aplink.video/qo6https://aplink.news/81p

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP presses F1 racing on human rights; helps free political prisoner

has kept human rights on the media agenda while covering the international Formula One auto racing series. His reporting has had impact and is now credited with helping free a political prisoner in Bahrain, site of one of the races.Paris-based Pugmire, long aware of governmental efforts at “sportswashing” in authoritarian countries hosting the series, had been one of the first journalists to press world champion Lewis Hamilton last season about jailed dissidents after discovering that Hamilton had received letters with harrowing descriptions of torture and sexual abuse by authorities in Bahrain. When an 11-year-old boy whose father is on Bahrain's death row sent Hamilton a drawing of the driver’s Mercedes race car, Pugmire had asked the driver publicly what he would do it about the case. Hamilton pledged to raise the cases with Bahraini authorities, saying the boy’s letter “really hits home.” Such questioning by reporters is rare and risky at sports events in such tightly controlled countries, but Pugmire kept at it for months.Then, this past September, an 18-year-old man was released from prison in Bahrain after being allegedly being tortured since 2019, an apparent reprisal against his family. His mother had spent more than two years in prison for criticizing the Bahrain F1 race on social media.The family’s supporters credit Pugmire’s reporting for helping lead to the release.Pugmire raised the rights issue again at the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix last week, asking Hamilton about a doctor on a 138-day hunger strike. The driver, who wore a rainbow helmet in support of LGBTQ rights in Qatar, said F1 is “duty bound” to call attention to human rights.AP’s reporting emboldened other media, including the BBC and Britain’s The Times, to follow Pugmire’s lead, questioning drivers and F1’s governing body about such issues. Pugmire won praise from a Bahraini human rights advocacy group as well as AP’s news leadership.https://aplink.news/etyhttps://aplink.news/gnghttps://aplink.news/xzehttps://aplink.news/ba9

Best of the Week — First Winner

In the wake of Texas’ abortion ban, AP gives voice to women now going to out-of-state clinics

In America’s pitched debate over abortion, the voices of the people most affected by the slew of new laws restricting access to abortion are seldom heard.

Allowing patients to tell their stories of seeking to end their pregnancies has been a priority in AP’s coverage of Texas’ new law banning most abortions. Oklahoma City-based reporter Sean Murphy and Miami-based photographer Rebecca Blackwell delivered impressively on that goal with a sensitively written, visually compelling all-formats package.

The pair carefully negotiated access to a clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, and earned the trust of Texas patients whose voices were vividly brought to life in text, photo, video and audio. They also met with anti-abortion protesters outside the clinic.

For gaining access and handling a delicate and polarizing story with professionalism, grace and accuracy while providing AP’s worldwide audience a greater understanding of the real-life impacts of the Texas law, Murphy and Blackwell are AP’s Best of the Week — First Winners.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

From sea and air, AP covers Mediterranean migrant rescues

documented migrant activity that peaked during the late summer months as many set off from Libya’s shores on dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea.Cairo-based reporter Magdy and video journalist Hatem spent several weeks aboard a search-and-rescue ship that patrols the central Mediterranean. They witnessed the rescues of more than 60 migrants who were at risk of drowning; several of the migrants told harrowing stories of torture and abuse in migrant detention centers in Libya. The pair’s reporting was among the most in-depth coverage since the pandemic of the atrocities migrants face on the journey toward Europe.Meanwhile, after months of trying, Barcelona-based Brito got a seat aboard a small aircraft that non-governmental rescue groups use to monitor the migrants at sea. Working all formats, Brito showed over the course of multiple flights how the crew searched for boats in distress and prodded ships in the area to take part in rescues.The coverage coincided with the largest crackdown on migrants inside Libya in recent years, during which some 5,000 were detained by Libyan forces, reported by Magdy from the ship operated by Doctors Without Borders. AP’s multiformat work at sea and from the air saw widespread use in Europe, the Middle East and beyond. https://aplink.news/yz1https://aplink.video/3xohttps://aplink.news/sfrhttps://aplink.video/w4q

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Some chiropractors profiteering, undermining vaccines

joined forces to document anti-vaccine activism among a vocal group of chiropractors.Rhode Island-based reporter Smith has been closely tracking anti-vaccine activists. That diligence paid off with a story on a group of influential chiropractors who are becoming leading voices against vaccines and coronavirus safety measures. They’re making money by peddling alternatives as they work to weaken vaccine-related state laws and policies across the U.S., undermining one of the key tools in fighting the pandemic.

The report by Smith and statehouse reporters Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, spotlighted an industry that has had little scrutiny during the pandemic. It started out as a tip: Chiropractors attending an anti-vaccine conference in Wisconsin had earned continuing education credits valid toward their licenses. It reminded Smith that a group lobbying against vaccines, Stand for Health Freedom, had been co-founded with chiropractors.The trio scoured public databases to find states allowing CE credits for the anti-vaccine conference, dug up chiropractic board meeting minutes, tracked down statehouse testimony and public comment by chiropractors in numerous states, reviewed news reports and mined digital tools along with interviews of chiropractors, lawmakers and public health advocates to establish that:

— 10 states gave CE credits for the anti-vaccine conference, and that it brought in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue to the chiropractic group and college that sponsored it— Chiropractors have worked to influence vaccine-related legislation and policy in at least 24 states since 2019; a chiropractor-backed group running several lobbying campaigns has never registered as a lobbyist— Dozens of chiropractors use their websites to discourage patients from getting vaccines— Chiropractors are advertising on Facebook and Instagram to sell anti-vaccine products— A California chiropractic group raised $545,000 for anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.— Chiropractic professional groups have taken anti-vaccine stands, including one now run by a longtime anti-vaccine activisthttps://aplink.news/z1m

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP all-formats team gets rare, exclusive access to Taliban crackdown on drug users

From a fetid bridge underpass frequented by addicts, to a police station, to a grim drug detoxification ward, this all-formats package driven by powerful visuals takes a stunning look at Afghanistan’s drug underworld and the severe treatment of heavy drug users by the Taliban. The work also bears witness to AP’s robust reporting from Afghanistan, which has continued unabated since the Taliban takeover.

Video journalist Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Felipe Dana and correspondent Samya Kullab, all currently on assignment in Kabul, gained rare access to this especially bleak segment of Afghan life, earning the trust of street addicts and, through a combination of persistence and luck, documenting Taliban detention of users, all amid a difficult and dangerous environment for journalists.For a rare exclusive that sets a high standard for coverage while shedding light on a harsh reality in Afghanistan, the team of Chernov, Dana and Kullab is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Doctors tell AP of rampant misinformation among unvaccinated

tapped into her network of sourcing among doctors around the country to deliver an all-formats story that offered new perspective on the rampant misinformation that they're experiencing in dealing with unvaccinated patients during the delta surge of COVID-19.Hollingsworth, based in Kansas City, Missouri, conducted interviews with six doctors, each giving new examples of the misinformation that has underpinned the recent surge. One doctor, for example, said he had resorted to showing vaccine-hesitant patients a Twinkie ingredient label to make the point that it’s hard for anyone to fully understand every item that goes into federally approved food and drugs. Hollingsworth did all the interviews on Zoom and teamed up with AP Central Region video journalist Carrie Antlfinger on packaged video pieces. She also shared sound clips with the audio and digital teams; those were embedded in the piece.The story generated strong play and huge reader engagement numbers. It was a shining example of how deep sourcing on a newsworthy topic can lead to a sharply focused, well-executed story.https://aplink.news/iubhttps://aplink.video/4n0

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP lands interviews with Anita Hill, 2 top #MeToo figures

has built a strong source relationship with the very private Anita Hill over the course of 15 years, interviewing her many times. The national writer has also developed ties with other high-profile figures in the #MeToo movement, earning a reputation of trust and respect.That source building resulted in a series of three recent interviews with women of color, all advocates for victims of sexual harassment and abuse:— #MeToo founder Tarana Burke— the first interview in any format with Monifa Bandele the new head of the embattled organization Time’s Up— Hill, who gave Noveck one of just two on-camera interviews to mark the release of her new book on sexual violence, which comes 30 years after her testimony in Congress against Clarence Thomas.All three appeared on camera, speaking of their experiences facing sexual misconduct and how American society must deal simultaneously with its race and gender struggles, because one cannot be solved without the other.https://aplink.news/okmhttps://aplink.video/wn9https://aplink.news/x3chttps://aplink.news/vqq

Best of the States

AP team embeds in West Virginia city seeing a resurgence of addiction amid the pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic killed more than a half-million Americans, it also quietly inflamed what had already been one of the country’s greatest public health crises: addiction. 

To tell that story, a multiformat AP team — writer Claire Galofaro, photographer David Goldman and video journalist Mike Householder — spent time in Huntington, West Virginia, exploring the resurgence of addiction in a community that had made progress against drug abuse. The AP team embedded with the city’s Quick Response team for a week, providing a unique window into the suffering those with addiction have endured as the pandemic brought despair and cut off access to support systems and health care resources.

The evocative package resonated with readers, and the story’s main subject said she was “ecstatic” over how well the story captured the world she sees every day.

For sensitive and compelling coverage that furthers the AP’s efforts to explore the rippling consequences of COVID-19, the team of Galofaro, Goldman and Householder wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

50 years after the US declared war on drugs, AP examines racial disparities

used data and on-the-ground reporting to explore the fallout of America’s war on drugs, launched 50 years ago this summer by President Richard Nixon.Race and ethnicity reporter Morrison, joined by data journalist Kastanis and multiformat journalist Breed, set out to tell a story of the toll that harsh prison sentences and lifetime restrictions post-release have taken on Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities.To do so, the AP reviewed federal and state data, finding that the Black incarceration rate in America surged from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 in 2000, and the rate for the Latino population grew from 208 per 100,000 people to 615, while the white incarceration rate grew at a more modest rate, from 103 per100,000 people to 242.But beyond the data, the AP trio put names and a face to those caught up in this grinding war with no clear winners but many losers. The story’s lead subject, Alton Lucas, could have had a life of touring nationally and internationally with his DJ friend, but instead discovered drugs and the drug trade at the height of the war on drugs. As a crack cocaine addict involved in trafficking, the North Carolina man faced decades in prison at a time when the drug abuse and violence plaguing Black communities were not seen as the public health issue that opioids are today. The combination of Morrison’s deep reporting, Breed’s photos and video, and Kastanis’ data analysis, accompanied by graphics, resulted in a newsy, nuanced package, rich with historical context.https://aplink.news/k6jhttps://aplink.video/017

Best of the Week — First Winner

Dedicated source work produces rare video as Tigray forces retake regional capital

Through months of patient contacts, Nairobi-based senior producer Khaled Kazziha built trust with an Ethiopian freelancer who promised AP first refusal on video and photos he made as events unfolded in the embattled Tigray region. That promise was fulfilled recently with images that included celebrations as Tigrayan forces retook the regional capital Mekele, prisoners of war in detention and an on-camera interview with Tigray's leader, among other rare scenes.

Kazziha had trained the freelancer and knew he was in Mekele when Ethiopian government forces fled Tigray, allowing the region's former leaders, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, to return. But with communication and transportation blocked, Kazziha had to wait almost two weeks for the footage to reach him. He then worked tirelessly with colleagues in Addis Ababa to cut multiple video packages that have been widely used by AP’s global video clients and platforms.

“This is a reminder that a journalist never knows whose help might prove critically useful in the future, and training and teaching people wherever one goes ... especially in the world’s trouble spots,” said Andy Drake, deputy director of newsgathering for Africa.

For exceptional collaboration and video production work that led to multiple world exclusives, Kazziha and the video freelancer — unnamed for his security — share AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

A photographer’s unique vision merges past and present for front-line nurses

With the U.S. slowly emerging from COVID-19, it might be easy to assume that the pandemic will soon be in the past, but for many, particularly health care workers, the trauma of what they experienced while caring for deathly sick patients will be with them for years to come.

To capture the idea that the past can be part of the present, Los Angeles photographer Jae Hong focused on intensive care nurses at a Southern California hospital who had taken care of extremely ill COVID patients and, despite all efforts, had lost many. That ward closed this spring, but the memories endure for these nurses.

Hong’s approach called for a photo technique not typically used in reporting the news: He made multiple exposure portraits of 10 of the nurses in the hospital, resulting in haunting images that show each nurse both in the photo, the present, and seemingly somewhere else in the past.

Accompanied by revealing interviews, the piece played widely in the U.S. and beyond, and attracted attention on social media.

For arresting, interpretive photography that evokes the lingering effects of the pandemic on these front-line medical workers, Hong earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Overdose deaths for Black American soar during pandemic

teamed up to make AP first to report on how the pandemic exacerbated the spread of opioid addiction among Black Americans. Their story focused on St. Louis, bringing to light a new consequence of the coronavirus and racial injustice, major themes of the past year, showing that the pandemic accelerated a trend that was already in the works: The spread of opioid addiction from mostly rural, white communities to more urban, Black neighborhoods. The reporting placed this trend squarely in a history of drug addiction in America that has long discriminated against Black people, and described how even today, the best drug abuse treatment is more accessible to white people than to Black people. As one doctor put it, the soaring death rate from drug addiction has become a pressing civil rights issue. The story was sensitively told in text, photos and video, with poignant details, including one mother fearing her son’s overdose death for so long that she paid for his funeral in monthly installments. The care taken in telling this story was rewarded with AP’s second-highest reader engagement metrics of the day.https://aplink.news/ak7https://aplink.video/ce5https://aplink.photos/kgr

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Secret panel investigating Louisiana State Police unit’s treatment of Black motorists

From the very beginning of Jim Mustian’s stellar reporting on the death of Black motorist Ronald Greene, he has been driven by two main questions: What really happened to Greene on the night of his 2019 arrest? And was this a pattern of how Louisiana state troopers treated Black motorists?

Mustian answered the first last month when he obtained body camera video showing troopers stunning, choking, punching and dragging the unarmed Greene as he apologized and begged for mercy. 

And he began answering the second this past week when he exclusively reported that the Louisiana State Police has convened a secret panel to investigate whether Troop F — the same unit involved in Greene’s arrest  — was systematically targeting other Black motorists. Mustian’s detailed reporting and solid sourcing turned up new cases and new video, and he landed the first-ever interview with one of the victims. 

His scoop scored with heavy play and strong engagement. For dogged reporting to keep the AP ahead on a searing case of racial injustice and its continuing fallout, Mustian earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Deep preparation and experience put AP ahead on Mladic verdict

teamed up to provide exceptional coverage in all formats of the final verdict for Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, in which U.N. judges rejected his appeals on charges of orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, affirming his life sentence.Chief correspondent Corder worked closely with AP colleagues in the Balkans in the days leading up to the verdict to prepare for all the possible outcomes, preparing alerts and urgents for each, as well as for the possibility that victims’ groups could leak the verdict early. Knowing that the victims’ representatives are not always accurate, Corder held off on the alert until AP had the full verdict from the judges, and other major world media followed his lead.Photographer Dejong, who had covered Mladic’s appearances at the court over several years, patiently waited for the one moment during the long verdict when the ex-commander made a hand gesture — holding up his fingers as if clicking a shutter to mimic the photographers fixed on him. The image circled the world.AP had four different live shots up for a good part of the day on AP Direct and Live Choice, compared with a single courtroom feed that a major competitor accessed at the last minute. AP put out a video edit of the verdict 44 minutes ahead of the competition, and was much faster with reaction from the victims and their families in Sarajevo and Srebrenica, and from Serb veterans, comrades of Mladic and people in Belgrade.https://aplink.news/h1rhttps://aplink.video/ub0https://aplink.video/rz4https://aplink.video/gmx

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team in Ethiopia's Tigray region documents Eritrean atrocities

overcame government intimidation and security challenges to report from the ground on atrocities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region: Despite official denials, Eritrean soldiers are firmly entrenched in Tigray, brutally gang-raping women, killing civilians, looting hospitals and blocking food and medical aid. The coverage was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.Undeterred by initial difficulties obtaining visas for Ethiopia and then permission to visit Tigray, the all-formats team made their way to Mekele, where trustworthy local resources, including fixers, translators and drivers willing to be seen with foreign journalists needed to be found. Then the work of reporting began. Documenting cases of abuse was no easier, with roads blocked by troops at every turn. And having found victims and eyewitnesses, this resourceful team had to gain their trust.The resulting package is riveting, with searing interviews and arresting visuals, building on AP’s powerful body of coverage on the Tigray conflict over the past seven months.https://bit.ly/2SZUGlehttps://bit.ly/34ZBJSRhttps://bit.ly/3cidfIf

Best of the States

Intern’s rape accusation against Idaho lawmaker prompts AP national review of state legislatures

When a 19-year-old legislative intern reported that a state lawmaker in Idaho raped her, she almost immediately faced a campaign of harassment from right-wing groups in the state, and even from other state representatives, who publicized her identity against her will. A legislative panel then forced her to testify from behind a screen at an ethics hearing, after which she was followed and subjected to still further abuse by the accused lawmaker’s supporters.

The sordid story of the young woman’s ordeal was covered with sensitivity by Boise correspondent Rebecca Boone in a series of pieces that included an exclusive interview with the alleged victim, and it prompted a wider look by AP’s State Government Team at allegations of sexual misconduct in statehouses around the country. That story, led by correspondent David Lieb and Report for America data journalist Camille Fassett, provided state-by-state details to AP customers and revealed public allegations against at least 109 state lawmakers in 40 states.

For aggressive yet respectful coverage that put one woman’s voice at the center of the story while providing distinctive national context, Boone, Lieb and Fassett share this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

In all formats: Nurse battles back from COVID, lung transplant

produced a powerful and intimate narrative of one nurse’s precarious fight to survive COVID-19 — including the double lung transplant that saved her life.National writer Geller had wanted to find a health care worker recovering after being incapacitated by COVID. He started out calling hospitals around the country with lung transplant and COVID long-hauler programs, finally gettting a referral from Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which had performed the first and, by far, the most COVID lung transplants. They put him in touch with nurse Kari Wegg, who at one point before her transplant had been in a coma with little chance of recovery. Wegg got winded during their first phone conversation, a couple of weeks after she returned home, but she and her husband were open to telling their story. The AP trio would spend large parts of four days in the family’s Indiana home. The result was a riveting read with compelling visuals by Arbogast and Crawford, whose video was edited by multiformat journalist Allen Breed. The package won terrific online play, including the Chicago Tribune and Indiana news sites, with remarkably high reader engagement.https://bit.ly/3vtLoMDhttps://bit.ly/3gQXye6