Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Vaccine production hampered by pharma patents

broke the news that governments and aid groups worldwide, along with the World Health Organization, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share their vaccine information more broadly to meet a yawning global shortfall and inequities in vaccine distribution. The companies say they can only sign deals on a one-on-one basis to protect their intellectual property, but critics believe they have broader obligations because they took taxpayer money to develop the vaccines. The London-based correspondents found three factories on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines on short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how. A former director of chemistry at Moderna confirmed that, and photographer Al-emrun Garjon delivered photos of a high-tech factory in Bangladesh producing vaccine at about 25% of its capacity.After the AP story ran, the head of WHO, citing a health emergency, called for patent rights to be waived until the end of the pandemic so that vaccine supplies can be dramatically increased. https://bit.ly/38vMgXI

Best of the Week — First Winner

Meticulous planning, near-flawless execution put AP ahead of the pack on Prince Philip coverage

The AP team in London had been preparing its coverage of Prince Philip’s death for years to ensure when the moment came, everyone would be ready. That exceptional planning laid the foundation for lightning handling and a major win when Philip passed on Friday.

The preparation included multiple revisions of the main obituaries, filing plans for all formats and a strategy for how the newsroom and editorial support teams would communicate to customers. It all paid off on Friday when AP picked up rumors of Philip’s death. U.K. news director Susie Blann confirmed with her sources and immediately let the wider team know. When official word came via email from the palace, the all-formats coverage team of more than 25 individuals in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States was poised for action. 

From the Flash alert two minutes after the email confirmation, AP was incredibly fast with the news: text, photos, live and edited video, all tailored to customers who depend on and expect this coverage when it matters. 

For exceptional, nearly flawless performance across the AP on one of the biggest stories thus far this year, Susie Blann, Martin Cleaver, Bridget Jones, Anne Marie Belgrave, Samira Becirovic, Jill Lawless, Naomi Koppel, Danica Kirka, Sarah DiLorenzo and the international royal coverage team earn AP’s Best of the Week honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP package marks 20th anniversary of legal same-sex marriage

showcased AP’s global reach with a package marking the 20th anniversary of the Netherlands becoming the first country with legal same-sex marriages. Far more sweeping than a routine anniversary story, the coverage coordinated by New York-based national writer Crary and Netherlands chief correspondent Corder included an interview with one of the first couples married 20 years ago in the Netherlands. And with the help of multiple AP bureaus, it also detailed the uneven progress of same-sex marriage worldwide — now legal in 28 countries.In Amsterdam, the package was 20 years in the making — since April 1, 2001, when photographer Dejong documented the historic weddings. He re-edited those photos, then tracked down one of the couples he photographed in 2001; he and freelance video journalist Furtula persuaded the couple to grant an on-camera interview at their home.Back in the U.S., Goodman, photo editor for the Top Stories Hub, spent hours searching AP photo archives for images of milestone same-sex marriages around the world, producing a striking 24-photo package that included Dejong’s then-and-now photos. And top stories artist Francois Duckett created an interactive map showing the countries that have legalized same-sex marriage. AP’s impressive body of work won plaudits on social media and extensive play.https://bit.ly/3fRHFDLhttps://bit.ly/3sSZ3fi

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Sourcing, viral video sets AP apart on women’s NCAA tournament

used his access to newsmakers in women’s basketball to deliver powerful multiplatform coverage of AP’s coach and player of the year, including video that has topped a half-million views and counting.Feinberg, the preeminent sports writer in women’s hoops, continues to separate AP’s coverage from the competition. While anchoring coverage of the women’s NCAA Tournament, Feinberg was able to get the parents of University of Maryland’s Brenda Frese to surprise her with the coach of the year news via a Zoom call during a team practice, with AP video recording the moment. And he arranged for UConn coach Geno Auriemma to surprise Bueckers, presenting her with the player of the year award in front of the team. Said AP Global Sports Editor Michael Giarrusso: “It’s (Doug’s) source-building that gets us this kind of access. Everyone is sharing the video ... including some of our biggest customers and competitors.”https://bit.ly/3uKVEQjhttps://bit.ly/3t0PISEhttps://bit.ly/2Q3vvguhttps://bit.ly/3mr6acq

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Resourceful AP team leads coverage of stuck Suez ship

dominated the story of the massive cargo ship blocking in the Suez Canal. Using satellite images, tracking data and healthy skepticism, the AP team avoided the errors of their competitors to deliver accurate, timely all-formats reporting. From the first day that the Ever Given wedged itself across the canal, authorities offered incorrect information, claiming the canal remained open to traffic and that the ship had been pulled aside. While others repeated those false claims, AP relied on tracking data to report the truth — the Suez Canal was completely cut off.Cairo regional news director Hyde and her Dubai counterpart, Gambrell, worked closely together on this complex story, directing coverage while also producing video and photo content as text reporter Magdy and video journalist Hatem worked on the ground in Suez despite tight restrictions.AP’s relationship with the satellite photo provider Planet Labs gave AP an advantage of eight hours or more over major competitor agencies. Interviews recorded on Zoom and video of idle ships in the canal allowed clients to visualize the story — with one video edit being used by 118 channels. Text explainers added context that helped clients better tell the story that affected shipping and economies across the globe.https://bit.ly/3cEUE9Vhttps://bit.ly/3cGz5pw

Best of the Week — First Winner

Sensitive reporting from Greece tells harrowing story of migrant father charged in son’s shipwreck death

Among the human tragedies stemming from irregular migration, an Afghan boy’s drowning leapt out at Athens-based bureau chief Elena Becatoros when Greek authorities took the unprecedented step of charging his father with child endangerment, for embarking on the perilous journey from Turkey to Greece with his son. 

Led by Becatoros, the AP’s all-formats team in Athens tracked down the father, then spent weeks using formidable people skills and patience to gently persuade the grieving man to recount how his 5-year-old son slipped from his arms and drowned when the boat carrying migrants smashed against rocks and broke in two. The journalists also overcame the father’s initial refusal to appear in photos or on video, while another survivor added depth and detail too painful for the father to describe.

For their dogged pursuit and sensitive telling of this heart-wrenching story that puts human faces to the grim statistics on migration, the team of Becatoros, senior producer Theodora Tongas, video journalist Srdjan Nedeljkovic, freelancer Michalis Svarnias, chief photographer Thanassis Stavrakis and newsperson Derek Gatopoulos wins AP’s Best of the Week honors.

Best of the States

AP all-formats team looks at town’s Black reparations through the eyes of a retired professor

When the college town of Amherst, Massachusetts, began taking a hard look at paying reparations to Black residents, the AP's Boston bureau set about using it as a backdrop for a national look at where things stand on making amends for the lingering effects of slavery.

The team of video journalist Rodrique Ngowi, reporter Philip Marcelo and photographer Charlie Krupa soon found the perfect subject to make the project character-centered: 96-year-old former University of Massachusetts professor Edwin Driver, who arrived on campus in the 1940s as one of the nation’s first Black faculty members at a flagship university — only to find no one would sell him a house. He said he was denied pay raises for decades.

The all-formats team came away with a powerful and illuminating portrait of a Black man who'd been wronged — a compelling way to frame the earnest but complicated public effort to address injustice. 

For impactful and highly visual storytelling that helped put a face on a provocative and politically charged issue — one the nation will be wrestling with for years to come — Ngowi, Krupa and Marcelo earn the week’s Best of the States honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exclusive: Why compensation denied for tortured US veteran

broke the news that a former Iran detainee, Amir Hekmati, a U.S. citizen, Marine and Iraq war veteran whose 2016 release had been widely lauded during the Obama administration, had been denied compensation as a result of suspicions he had gone to Iran to sell secrets, not to visit his grandmother.The exclusive solved the mystery of why the Justice Department had refused to pay Hekmati $20 million in compensation for years of imprisonment that included brutal torture. National security writer Tucker read through hundreds of pages of documents filed in the obscure Court of Federal Claims to piece together the narrative, accompanied by photos and a video from Washington video journalist Nathan Ellgren, which had roughly 2,000 views on YouTube.https://bit.ly/3lJ91wQhttps://bit.ly/3rfjaT6

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Exclusive: SUV came through hole in border before crash

broke news by reporting that an SUV with 25 people crammed inside drove through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border fence shortly before it collided with a tractor-trailer, killing 13. A multiformat AP team was among the first on scene after the crash in California’s remote imperial Valley. Over the next two days, AP provided exclusive photos and video and broke the news of the hole cut in the wall. Spagat, AP correspondent based in San Diego, had on-the-record information from the Border Patrol sector chief, allowing AP to report exclusively that surveillance video showed the SUV and another vehicle driving through the opening in the wall, and that the incident was believed part of an immigrant smuggling operation.https://bit.ly/3l8oAxLhttps://bit.ly/3qNcP1f

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Juke joint package captures Grammy-nominated bluesman

teamed up to tell the moving story of a Mississippi blues artist who is keeping a musical tradition alive. Reporter Willingham couldn’t find a phone number for Grammy-nominated Jimmy “Duck” Holmes — musician, owner of the oldest-surviving juke joint in the country and the keeper of the unique Bentonia, Mississippi, blues musical tradition — so she set off to find him and interview him in the Blue Front Café. She then returned twice for more interviews, details of Holmes’ daily life, and impressive visuals by photographer Solis and video journalist Plaisance Jenkins. The all-formats package brought attention to Holmes’ rich musical contributions and conveyed a strong sense of place — Holmes’ café isn’t just a music spot but a part of the fabric of the close-knit community. The story had some 23,000 pageviews on AP News with remarkably high reader engagement.https://bit.ly/2OOQF1ihttps://bit.ly/3rGnewG

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP investigation: States spent billions on medical supplies

took the lead in obtaining and analyzing public records that disclosed state coronavirus-related spending that had largely been kept from the public. The reporters filed Freedom of Information Act requests in all 50 states seeking purchase order records to determine how much was being spent on what items, which suppliers the states were using and how the spending compared across the states.The findings revealed that overall the states spent at least $7 billion on medical gear in the first few months of the pandemic, a massive amount that had not been reported until AP’s investigation. Even lawmakers in most states did not know the scope of spending, much of which was inflated by competition between states and huge price markups for routine items.The project reflected a signature goal of the AP news department this year: to “connect the dots” across the states for our U.S. customers in a way that only AP can. After months spent analyzing the state-by-state information, the data team made all the information available in an easy-to-use format for AP members and for our own state reporters. In addition to the national stories, more than a dozen AP reporters wrote state sidebars, receiving prominent play online and in print. https://bit.ly/37HJS07

Best of the Week — First Winner

Conspiracy, lies and social media: AP finds state, local GOP officials promoting online disinformation

After the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, investigative reporters Garance Burke, Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman wanted to know if local, county and state Republican officials across the country were continuing to amplify online messages similar to those that had inspired the riot, and what they hoped to accomplish by doing so.

The trio turned to data journalist Larry Fenn, AP statehouse reporters and a comprehensive archive of the Parler social media platform. A third-party algorithm matched public officials to their Parler accounts, allowing an unprecedented look at GOP officials’ unfiltered posts on the right-wing aligned site. The analysis of Parler and other alternative platforms identified a faction of lower-level Republican officials that have pushed lies, misinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories echoing those that fueled the violent U.S. Capitol siege.

For harnessing the power of social media analysis, data science and AP’s state-level expertise to reveal how lies and misinformation from the 2020 election have reached deep into the GOP’s state apparatus, Burke, Mendoza, Linderman and Fenn win AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Determined source work exposes horrific massacre in holy city of Ethiopia’s isolated Tigray region

Ethiopia’s military campaign in its defiant Tigray province has been shrouded in secrecy since the conflict started in November, but AP East Africa correspondent Cara Anna has been determined to report what happened in the virtually sealed-off region. She has chased every lead through relentless source work, building contacts and networks as she reported one exclusive after another.

For this latest exclusive, Anna had been hearing rumors of a massacre in the holy city of Axum. When phone service returned to the city recently, she was able to reach the deacon of the Axum church who described in disturbing detail the mass killings by Eritrean troops. He believes some 800 people were killed that weekend at the church and around the city, and that thousands in Axum have died in all. Anna found other survivors who corroborated the deacon’s story and offered additional details.

Her reporting scooped all other media and even human rights groups who had been investigating Axum. It also drew rare and surprisingly quick responses from the governments of both Eritrea and Ethiopia.

For determined and resourceful reporting to break through the secrecy surrounding the Tigray conflict and expose the atrocity at Axum, Anna wins AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Executioners sanitized official reports of federal inmates’ last moments

AP legal affairs reporter Michael Tarm witnessed 10 of the unprecedented 13 federal executions in the final months of the Trump administration, diligently taking notes on what he saw in the chamber, from the inmates’ last words to their last breaths. 

But weeks after the last execution in mid-January, something nagged at him: The executioner’s official account did not jibe with what he had observed during the execution. Tarm went back, looking through hundreds of filings and court transcripts. His reporting resulted in a stunning exclusive on how the executioners all used euphemisms like “snored” and “fell asleep” while Tarm and other witnesses saw inmates’ stomachs dramatically shuddering and jerking in the minutes after lethal injections.

The sanitized accounts, Tarm realized, raised serious questions about whether officials misled courts to ensure the executions would be completed before Joe Biden, a death penalty foe, took office. His story — the latest exclusive in AP’s coverage of the federal executions — received prominent play and reader engagement.

For backing up his own observations with rigorous reporting to hold the federal government accountable for its official accounts of the executions, Tarm earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Latest on New York COVID policy: State sent more than 9,000 virus patients to nursing homes

For nine months, AP has led all media on the story of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial directive to return recovering coronavirus patients from hospitals to nursing homes during the pandemic.

Last week, reporters Bernard Condon and Jennifer Peltz added to that record. Using data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, they reported exclusively that more than 9,000 patients in New York were released under the state’s policy, amid criticism that it accelerated nursing home outbreaks. The latest AP scoop has helped put Cuomo and his administration on the defensive at home and nationally.

For keeping AP at the forefront of this accountability story for the better part of a year — including their latest break documenting the release of COVID patients into nursing homes — Condon and Peltz earn AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

AP team finds diversity of politics and religion among West Virginia evangelicals

A tweet was the seed for this illuminating story. “Most people in my rural, Appalachian hometown are being radicalized at church by their pastor, which is the person they trust the most,” it read. AP’s Global Religion team ran with it.

Reporter Luis Andres Henao and visual journalist Jessie Wardarski visited the parishioners of three churches in Bluefield, West Virginia, including one pastor who had attended the Jan. 6 Washington rally that degenerated into a riot. The AP pair spent weeks convincing him to sit down for an interview. The result was an all-formats package of diverse congregations seeking common ground, even as they are divided on the role of evangelical Christianity in American politics. 

For applying gentle persuasion and balanced reporting to produce a nuanced look at religion and politics in one West Virginia town, Henao and Wardarski win this week’s Best of the States award. 

Best of the States

AP months ahead of New York state in identifying undercount of nursing home deaths

When AP reported exclusively last August that New York state was undercounting its COVID nursing home death toll by thousands, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ripped the story as part of a politically motivated “blame game.”

But the state’s own investigation, announced last week, reached a nearly identical conclusion, affirming AP’s reporting.

AP’s 2020 investigation had seized on the fact that New York counts just residents who died at nursing homes, not those who were transported to hospitals and died there. AP’s analysis of federal data indicated that the state’s official toll was undercounted by 65%, or well over 4,000 deaths. 

For sharp reporting that led the media pack, withstood criticism from the governor and months later was vindicated, this week’s Best of the States award goes to Bernard Condon, Matt Sedensky and Meghan Hoyer (now data director at The Washington Post).

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP delivers unmatched all-formats coverage as Russians protest jailing of Navalny

The moment opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested upon his return to Moscow, AP’s Russia team knew the weekend’s protests would be big.

Working in sub-zero temperatures, AP teams in every format, from the Russian Far East to the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, delivered exceptional work capturing the scale and intensity of the protests — and the violent crackdown by police.

Excellent planning, experience and a wide network of freelancers across the country’s 11 time zones were among the factors that gave AP the edge over the competition. 

For determined, insightful coverage that captured the scope and political significance of the movement, the team of Tanya Titova, Alexander Zemlianichenko, Mstyslav Chernov, Kostya Manenkov, Dmitri Lovetsky, Pavel Golovkin, Daria Litvinova, Jim Heintz, Kirill Zarubin and Yulia Alekseyeva wins AP’s Best of the Week honors.

Best of the States

AP reporting reveals some front-line health care workers balking at COVID vaccine

The AP team of Bernard Condon, Matt Sedensky and Carla K. Johnson assembled the most detailed national look yet at one of the most vexing snags in the coronavirus vaccine rollout: Surprising numbers of health care workers — who have seen firsthand the misery inflicted by COVID-19 — are refusing the shots.

The deep reporting, with contributions from colleagues across the country, found the paradox occurring in nursing homes and hospitals, with some individual facilities seeing a refusal rate as high as 80%. The story, one of AP’s most-read on an extremely busy news week, quoted both health workers expressing fears of vaccine side effects and frustrated facility administrators.

For bringing to light an important part of the stumbling early rollout of the much-anticipated vaccine, Condon, Sedensky and Johnson win this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Records confirm Trump devotees fueled US Capitol riot

led an effort to dig into the backgrounds of more than 120 people who were either arrested or emerged on social media after storming the U.S. Capitol, finding they were overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials and donors and far-right militants.AP’s fast-breaking team effort to review social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records was the most comprehensive look yet at those involved in the riot, giving lie to claims by right-wing pundits that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa infiltrators. The detailed background work included calls, and in some cases even doorknocks, to nearly all whose names emerged from the Jan. 6 takeover.The AP found that many of the rioters were adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory as well as claims by Trump that the vote had been stolen. Several had openly threatened violence against Democrats and Republicans they considered insufficiently loyal to the president.The team’s story, accompanied by AP photos taken inside the Capitol, scored huge play and was featured prominently on major websites. It stayed among the top stories on AP News for two straight days. https://bit.ly/2Kd7Tn1