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)

AP reporting shows how the billions being spent to turn the tide on devastating western wildfires won’t be enough

told the story of a stumbling start to a historic wildfire mitigation effort intended to avoid a repeat of the climate-driven conflagrations that destroyed Western communities in recent years.Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

The Great Grift: How billions in COVID-19 relief aid was stolen or wasted

After a monthslong analysis, the AP revealed that at least 10% of $4 trillion in federal COVID-19 relief money was stolen or misspent.

The story was sparked by a simple question in January from Acting Global Investigations Editor Alison Kodjak: How much relief money was stolen? Richard Lardner, of the global investigations team, teamed up with climate reporter Jennifer McDermott and data team reporter Aaron Kessler to get an answer. They conducted scores of interviews, read dozens of government indictments and reports and tracked down experts.

In the end, they determined scam artists potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding, and another $123 billion was wasted or misspent — a combined loss of 10% of the relief aid the U.S. government has so far disbursed. Senior video producer Jeannie Ohm and motion graphics designer Eva Malek created an animated video explainer, narrated by Kessler, that succinctly laid out how easy it was for fraudsters to make off with so much money. Multimedia editor Kevin Vineys created a series of compelling graphics that helped break down government spending and potential theft.

For spending months investigating and documenting how much of the federal government’s $4.2 trillion in COVID-19 relief was looted or misspent, Lardner, McDermott, Kessler, Vineys and Malek earn Best of the Week — First Winners.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP lands major exclusive on final days of Jeffrey Epstein’s life before his jailhouse death 

's persistent public records work, coupled with strong expertise and collaboration across the newsroom helped land exclusive reporting detailing Jeffrey Epstein’s final days before he took his life while incarcerated at a federal jail in New York.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Reporter’s fair and accurate reporting on abortion restrictions generates new sources, story tips

was the first to report on lawsuits filed against Texas by women who sought abortions because their babies would survive, or their health was endangered.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP journalists trek into Grand Canyon to mark tribe’s spiritual homecoming 

were the only journalists invited to a private ceremony and blessing for a campground in Grand Canyon National Park that was renamed to Havasupai Gardens, nearly a century after the federal government forcibly removed the last Havasupai tribal member from the site.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

As abortion bans take hold, AP details new administration warnings to hospitals to ensure access 

in Washington reported exclusively on the results of a first-of its-kind federal investigation of hospitals that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a woman whose premature labor put her life at risk.Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP reveals DEA chief is being investigated for contracts to past associates 

Josh Goodman and Jim Mustian reported exclusively that a federal watchdog is investigating whether the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration under chief Anne Milgram improperly used millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to flout normal governing hiring procedures to hire past associates at a very high cost.   

The two followed up on a previous scoop about the arrest of former DEA agent Jose Irizarry, who confessed to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels and skimming millions of dollars from asset seizures and informants.   

After an external review of the DEA’s foreign operations was slammed for underplaying its scandals, Latin America reporter Goodman and investigative reporter Mustian began asking questions.   

What they found was that a Washington law firm that was hired as part of a no-bid contract did the review, and that its author was the former right-hand man to one of Milgram’s closest friends, former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. That led to more reporting, more questions and more sources talking about how the DEA used other no-bid contracts to hire Milgram’s past associates.  

For expert source reporting that holds accountable the DEA and its highest-ranking official, Goodman and Mustian win Best of the Week — First Winner. 

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Judge’s donations cloud rulings in Catholic bankruptcy

exclusively reported that a federal judge donated tens of thousands of dollars to New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church amid a contentious bankruptcy involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims, an apparent conflict that led to calls for him to recuse himself.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats team scores big in print, video with package on U.S. legal marijuana glut

scored huge play with print, online and video customers with a deeply reported, all-formats examination of the crash of the U.S. West Coast’s legal marijuana industry in the absence of federal legalization.  Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Deep sourcing and sensitive reporting deliver blockbuster on Mormon sex abuse cover-up

AP investigative reporter Mike Rezendes’ years of source work led him to a stunning discovery: a so-called help line that enabled a cover-up of sex abuse in the Mormon church community, including the case of a 5-year-old Arizona girl, molested by her father for seven years while church leaders were aware of the abuse.

Rezendes, video journalist Jessie Wardarski and photographer Dario Lopez met with victims and their families, earning their trust and telling the story in the victims’ own voices. The resulting package, including illustrations by Peter Hamlin, was one of AP’s most-viewed investigative projects of the year, protecting the victims even as it revealed a systemic effort to cover up horrific child sex abuse.

For deep sourcing and commitment to report a story with both impact and sensitivity, Mike Rezendes, Jessie Wardarski, Dario Lopez, Peter Hamlin and Randy Herschaft earn AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP leads on legal challenge to access to abortion pill 

led AP’s efforts to get the fastest and most comprehensive coverage of a federal judge’s hearing questioning the legality of access to medical abortions.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Source reporting leads to big scoop on first-ever rules to ‘forever chemicals’ 

obtained an on-the-record interview and a big scoop on the first-ever federal regulation of toxic PFAS chemicals, commonly known as “forever chemicals.”Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

FEMA mistranslations latest chapter in suppression of Indigenous languages

in Anchorage spotted a small item on the website of a radio station that serves a remote part of Alaska that described how a Federal Emergency Management Agency contractor had badly botched the translation of brochures into Alaska Native languages.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Louisiana officers charged in Black motorist’s deadly arrest

broke news that likely would never have happened had it not been for their more than two years of dogged, consistently groundbreaking reporting: Five Louisiana law officers were indicted on state charges ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance in the deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

The AP Interview breaks news on IMF head's push for China to rethink zero-COVID policy

scored a rare sit down, on-camera interview with International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva that broke news: She urged China to rethink its zero-COVID policy and said the U.S. Federal Reserve has to keep raising rates for the good of the global economy.

Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Monthslong investigation weaves sordid tale of debauchery within DEA

"The drug war is a game,” José Irizarry told two AP reporters during his final moments of freedom. “It was a very fun game that we were playing.”

Irizarry’s decision to spend some of his last few hours before beginning a 12-year federal prison sentence with two AP reporters in early 2022 was a moment years in the making that yielded a bombshell bacchanal of a story -- itself months in the making.

Four years ago, just before starting at The Associated Press, New York-based investigative reporter Jim Mustian received a tip about a DEA investigation into one of the agency’s own agents in Colombia. That spiraled into a string of AP scoops by Mustian and Miami-based Latin America correspondent Joshua Goodman on DEA corruption in Latin America, including an exclusive on the arrest of that agent. Irizarry had been accused of conspiring with Colombian drug cartels to divert millions from DEA money laundering stings in what prosecutors called one of the worst betrayals in DEA history.

For a deeply reported and compelling investigation, telling the tale of a former war-on-drugs warrior who crossed multiple boundaries, Mustian and Goodman earn AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

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)

AP Exclusive: Wind energy, golden eagles collide in US West

collaborated on an exclusive all-formats package that revealed how the booming development of clean energy from wind turbines threatens the preservation of iconic golden eagles in the U.S. West. Brown, a veteran environmental reporter, used sourcing, records searches and interviews, finding scientists concerned that collisions with turbine blades could lead to decline of golden eagle populations which thrive on the same open, windy landscapes preferred by wind energy developers.To document the plight of the birds and efforts to preserve them, Brown and video journalist Tobin traveled to remote northern Wyoming, where scientists rappelled down rock faces in their study of the eagles, producing strong visuals to accompany the engaging and deeply reported text story.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: DEA appeared to intervene after off-duty shooting by agent

investigated a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s deadly shooting of a mentally ill neighbor in Mississippi, revealing new details that raise questions about why the agent never faced trial on a murder charge — and the role played by DEA brass to quickly insert themselves into the case, blocking local authorities from talking to the agent.Mustian exclusively obtained hundreds of pages of investigative documents and transcripts, and spent days on the ground interviewing people with knowledge of the case for a story that questions the justification for the shooting, how Agent Harold Duane Poole avoided trial and whether the DEA overreached to protect one of its own amid a flurry of misconduct cases in the agency.Read more