AP learned from sources that U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped giving appointments for asylum through the CBP One mobile app in Laredo, Texas.Read more
AP noticed a trend in the monthly Customs and Border Protection data that no other news outlet did — the plummeting number of Venezuelans entering the U.S. — and then quickly used its international footprint to tell the story of Venezuelans struggling under Mexico’s crackdown.Read more
It started as a vague alert of a shooting in Maine. But within minutes of learning about it, Portland-based correspondent David Sharp had guidance that at least 16 people were dead. He knew that would make it the state’s deadliest shooting by far.
Even before the first AP alert went out, Sharp and Robert Bukaty were headed to Lewiston, where a gunman had opened fire in a bowling area and bar and then vanished into the night. They were the first national news crew to arrive, coming up live for video and filing the first images of the aftermath.
Sharp’s video interview with a shoeless man who hid in the machinery of the bowling alley as people died around him was among the first eyewitness accounts, getting wide usage by clients including The New York Times.
Ultimately, 18 people would die, and residents would stay locked inside their homes for days.
Throughout the following days, a crew of journalists shared responsibilities and information in Lewiston and beyond, including AP’s breaking news investigations team of Bernard Condon and Jim Mustian who exclusively reported that Maine police were alerted as recently as September to “veiled threats” by the U.S. Army reservist.
AP’s story, which was matched — with credit — over the next day by both The New York Times and CNN, marked the most detailed reporting yet on the contact law enforcement had with the gunman, who killed himself.
The cross-format, cross-department collaboration on this story was flawless and a demonstration of AP at its best. For aggressive breaking news reporting and investigations, we are delighted to award New England’s staff, Mike Balsamo, Alanna Durkin Durkin Richer, Lindsay Whitehurst, Condon and Mustian for the Best of the Week Award — First Winner.
With a display of lightning-fast collaboration, AP was the first news organization to report that a Maryland judge who was shot to death in his driveway had presided over the divorce case of a man identified as a suspect in his killing.Read more
Strong source work and planning put AP in a position to dominate coverage of the United Auto Workers strike.Read more
The AP, drawing reporters from the Religion, Race and Ethnicity and Democracy beat teams, executed perfectly to put together a remarkable package for the 60th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.Read more
AP showed how and why a major influx of Mauritanians is arriving in the United States.Read more
West Africa correspondent Sam Mednick was in Niamey — by chance to make use of a visa nearing expiration — when mutinous bodyguards launched a coup against their president. But her stellar, singlehanded all-formats coverage is due entirely to her extraordinary multimedia skills and perseverance.
Day after day, Mednick produced live video, photos of demonstrations, WhatsApp clips to colleagues and interviews on and off the record to show the importance of the coup in a country that has long been considered a bulwark of democracy against Islamic extremism and autocracy.
The result: A story that Mednick owned alone among international journalists.
For her tireless, astonishing multimedia coverage in a place where few of our competitors, if any, had a presence on the ground, we are honored to award Sam Mednick the Best of the Week — First Winner.
broke the news on June 21 that U.S. regulators had, for the first time, approved the sale of a new kind of meat made from animal cells.Read more.
AP staff and freelancers scrambled to Florida and set up an ad hoc newsroom inside and outside the federal courthouse in Miami, and many others in Washington, U.S. News and beyond dove in to provide support and expertise after the surprise news that the Trump documents case had been moved from Washington to Florida by prosecutors.Read more
teamed up for enterprising coverage to mark the 10th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, looking at the recovery from Sandy and how the nation prepares for major storms to come.The all-formats coverage included an examination of what remains to be done in the Northeast and the across the nation as sea levels rise and severe storms become more common; survivors’ post-storm experiences — not just after Sandy — revealing that the nation’s disaster response system is broken and needs reform to get money into victims’ hands more quickly; and an in-depth look at inequity in the distribution of post-storm aid and resources.Read more
scored two interviews with U.S. military chief Gen. Mark Milley in Normandy and unrivaled access to veterans at the 79th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.Read more.
knew offshore wind turbine pieces would depart Europe for New Bedford — and that the ship steaming in would be the visual representation of the arrival of the offshore wind industry in the U.S.Read more.
collaborated on an exclusive interview with the only survivor rescued from the site of the Pennsylvania chocolate factory explosion that killed seven people.Read more.
AP boasts about its global reach. An all-formats package reported from Iraq demonstrates how the deep expertise of its journalists also reaches back through history.
We have an amazing team that covers Iraq day in and day out. But we also have a hidden resource: people who were there when history happened and are with us today. When we see the opportunity, we can offer our readers and customers that context. That was the case with Jerome Delay and John Daniszewski, both of whom were there in 2003 at the beginning of it all. They went back to offer some context about what has changed.
Delay and Daniszewski were both among the few international journalists in Baghdad when the U.S. launched its “shock and awe” campaign. They joined with video journalist Lujain Jo, a native Iraqi, and video journalist Jerry Marmer, who was embedded with Marines who invaded by land 20 years ago, to deliver an authoritative and nuanced portrait of a country that’s been out of the spotlight since the defeat of the Islamic State group five years ago.
Instead of focusing solely on the war-torn image that many Iraqis say is outdated, the AP team’s package also focused on what’s ahead for Iraq. Beyond exclusive interviews with the Iraqi president and prime minister, they also conducted dozens of interviews with Iraqi youth. These gave a deeper and sometimes counterintuitive look at a generation interrupted by war and terrorism, whose voices are rarely heard outside their home country. Half of Iraq’s population of 40 million is too young to remember Saddam Hussein.
For their sensitive and forward-looking view of an invasion that hit Iraq 20 years in the past, bolstered by their own lived experiences of it, Delay, Daniszewski, Jo and Harmer are this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
set AP up to not just document the first state to enact drag restrictions this year but to deliver a comprehensive look at the effects.Read more.
teamed up in two locations along the U.S.-Mexico border leading up to the expected expiration of a Trump-era asylum ban as unusually large numbers of migrants gathered to enter the United States. When the Supreme Court temporarily kept Title 42 in place at the 11th hour, Dell’Orto had already published a story on the critical and demanding role that faith-based groups have played receiving hundreds of thousands of migrants in recent months. One team based in the El Paso, Texas, area; while a second focused on the crossing to San Diego. Both AP teams hired photo and video journalists to produce stories throughout the week that mixed fast-moving policy developments with empathetic accounts of what migrants were dealing with.Read more.
used multiple formats to tell the story of Asian population growth in North Texas and how it's bringing change to the state. Spotting an Asian population growth trend in North Texas while covering the census beat, Schneider teamed up with Tang to get a fuller picture. The duo found a lot of the growth came from South Asians. Tang traveled to Texas, developing a story that put Texas’ growth into the context of overall Asian growth in the U.S. They also showed it’s not all Texas sunshine and smooth sailing for those trying to live their American dream. Some struggles, including racism and balancing being American and South Asian, can come with it.Read more.
kept the AP ahead and produced a nuanced and well-rounded report on the victims and students in the fatal shooting of three football players at the University of Virginia and wounding of two other students.Read more.
broke the news: After redistricting, hundreds of early voters in Nashville, Tennessee, were sent to the wrong congressional districts, jeopardizing election integrity. The first sign of trouble came when Kruesi was given conflicting information from state and local election officials about where she was supposed to vote, after Republicans redistricted the left-leaning city in hopes of flipping a Democratic seat.Nashville writers Kruesi and Matisse started reporting on the mixup and alerted election officials, who scrambled to fix the problem while confirming that more than 430 votes were cast in error; a lawsuit prompted by AP’s reporting said the number could ultimately reach into the thousands.Read more
