for determined source work that revealed President Donald Trump considering a dramatic expansion of his travel ban amid a renewed election-year focus on immigration. https://bit.ly/374a56n
“So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu,” sang the lead to AP’s Jan. 31 story when, after years of divisiveness and debate, the United Kingdom finally withdrew from the European Union.
The sharp and pithy writing was a highlight of AP’s unparalleled breadth of journalism, produced by a staff with the depth of talent, experience and knowledge in all formats that would dominate coverage of the historic withdrawal after nearly 50 years.
Video, text and photos staff were deployed to the U.K., including Scotland and Northern Ireland, and to Belgium, France, Gibraltar, Germany and beyond.
AP’s multiformat package captured the emotion and news developments on all sides – from the final lead-up to Brexit to the ceremonies, celebrations and pro-EU vigils on the night itself. And it included exclusives, like the reunion of the two miners – one French, the other British – who shook hands when they broke through to connect the Channel Tunnel nearly 30 years go.
For standout efforts in a continent-wide team effort in which there are too many to name, Jeffrey Schaeffer, Susie Blann, Jill Lawless, Raf Casert, Danica Kirka, Virginia Mayo, Martin Cleaver and Nicolas Garriga share AP’s Best of the Week honors.
On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has often cited a case – a life sentence given to black teen for killing a young girl – as proof of her tough-on-crime bona fides as a former prosecutor.
Over the course of a year, Minnesota-based investigative reporter Robin McDowell examined the case against Myon Burrell, who was 16 when he was sentenced to life in prison for the 2002 death of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards.
McDowell found major irregularities, including inconsistent evidence and questionable police tactics. The resulting package had impact, forcing new scrutiny of the case and Klobuchar’s handling of it.
For dogged reported that shed new light and focused attention on the case against a man who has long said he was wrongfully convicted, McDowell wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for delivering exclusive text, video and photos from the ground in Wuhan, China, just as the virus began to spread. Their quick deployment meant that the AP was the only agency on the ground producing content for two days, and almost the only media at all on the first day. Shooting from a taxi outside the hospital, they recorded dramatic images of workers dressed head to toe in white protective suits. And they were questioned by police, but not detained, while shooting exteriors of the market where the outbreak may have started. Their coverage gave AP exclusive images and interviews in all formats, with their video edits on day one leading all stories, including impeachment.https://bit.ly/3aQ4V01https://bit.ly/38HWulIhttps://bit.ly/2uH5adi
From the moment a caravan of Central American migrants set out from Honduras and crossed through Guatemala toward a series of standoffs with Mexican authorities, the AP was there, documenting every step.
Knowing that Mexican authorities were determined not to let the migrants pass, editors deployed cross-format teams to cover the caravan from both the Guatemalan and the Mexican sides of the border. That effort put the AP far ahead of the competition when the migrants started to cross the Suchiate River into Mexico.
In a coordinated effort, AP staffers and stringers shared information and skills to deliver dramatic coverage, including live video, as people waded across the river and scuffled with Mexico’s National Guard. The all-formats coverage was among AP’s top stories for Jan. 22.
For following the story early and then collaborating closely to produce dominant images and stories of the latest chapter in the migrant saga from Central America, the team of Moisés Castillo, María Verza, Sonia Pérez D., Marco Ugarte, Peter Orsi, Diego Delgado, Marcelo Viaño and Santiago Billy share AP’s Best of the Week honors.
New York-based federal law enforcement reporter Jim Mustian never gives up on a story.
Sticking with a case he began covering at another news organization in another state more than two years ago, Mustian landed a jaw-dropping exclusive for the AP: That a trove of hundreds of confidential emails has surfaced allegedly showing executives of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese amid its clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The story had an immediate, visceral impact with readers and earned praise from fellow journalists.
Mustian will continue to chip away at this story and, hopefully, reveal more about the Saints and their involvement with the church. But for now, Mustian’s sticktoitiveness and tough accountability reporting earns him this week’s Best of the States award.
Led by reporters Amy Taxin and Deepti Hajela, the AP harnessed its vast geographic reach and expertise on the topic of immigration to deliver a striking, all-formats examination of the nation’s beleaguered immigration court system.
AP journalists fanned out to courtrooms across the U.S. to vividly illustrate chaos in the nation’s immigration courts, plagued by a 1 million case backlog.
The reporting uncovered personal stories of immigrants entangled in the system, including an in-depth package from rural Georgia by reporter Kate Brumback and photographer David Goldman, and video by producer Noreen Nasir.
For a revealing look at a legal system struggling to cope with the influx of immigrants, and families caught up in the grinding legal process, Taxin, Hajela, Brumback, Goldman and Nasir share AP’s Best of the Week honors.
On the edge of America, the U.S. Census started in a tiny Alaska town on the Bering Sea. Toksook Bay, population 661, is only reachable by plane, and isn’t an easy place to live, much less report. The temperatures hover around zero, and daylight is scarce this time of year.
After months of planning, Alaska news editor Mark Thiessen and San Diego photographer Greg Bull spent four days in the remote community, getting rare access to day-to-day life and an interview with the person who would be the first counted, 90-year-old Lizzie Chimiugak.
And when the Census director finally arrived, delayed by bad weather that kept many other news organizations away, Thiessen and Bull were able to quickly file the spot news that Census 2020 had begun.
For overcoming myriad technical obstacles and very cold fingers to cover the news in a far-flung part of the country, while also providing a window into a world unlike any other place in the U.S., Thiessen and Bull win this week’s Best of the States award.
for quick response and dominant coverage of a deadly explosion and fire at a petrochemical plant in Tarragona, Spain, that killed three and injured seven. Tipped off by an alert on SAM, a global monitoring tool on social media in which AP is an investor, chief correspondent Parra alerted other formats as he worked to confirm the breaking news. Format leaders in turn alerted video journalists and freelancers who raced to the scene and secured rights to security camera video of the explosion. AP provided unmatched live coverage of a briefing by Spanish officials, and the strong AP coverage led video and photo play in Spain and in newspapers in Europe and around the world. https://bit.ly/37y1SYB
Manila-based photographer Aaron Favila was about to drive his family to the new Star Wars movie on Sunday afternoon when he saw an alarming tweet: The Taal volcano in Tagaytay, just 35 miles (60 kilometers) from the Philippine capital, was spewing ash and threatening an eruption.
The movie would have to wait.
Favila and video journalist Bogie Calupitan were soon making their way into a downpour of ash while chief correspondent Jim Gomez rushed to the bureau.
What followed was a textbook example of AP’s news gathering strategy of Now, Better, Best: being the first up with live shots and user content, and then dominating the story for two days even after the competition arrived. Their team’s fast and professional work in all formats was rewarded with strong play during a busy cycle for news and sports.
Favila still hasn’t seen the Star Wars movie, though the force was most definitely with him and his colleagues. For their work, Favila, Calupitan and Gomez receive AP’s Best of the Week honors.
The brief for the project was anything but simple: find a way to cover climate change’s effects on the planet in a way that avoided turning the audience off with a gloom-and-doom or heavily text-centric approach.
The result was a sprawling environmental series that expanded the boundaries of AP’s visual storytelling. The series traveled to 10 countries on five continents, focusing on everything from attempts to bring back Jamaica’s coral reefs, to the conservation of lions and gorillas in Africa, to China’s ambitious plans to build a national park system, to a trip down one of Europe’s last wild rivers.
It was the work of 33 journalists, 15 editors and four translators throughout AP’s global newsroom, reaching millions of people across all formats – and not just because Leonardo DiCaprio touted some of the installments on Instagram and Twitter.
For ambitious storytelling and compelling display on a subject of global significance, the extended team behind the “What Can Be Saved?” series wins AP’s Best of the Week award. This week’s cash award will be donated to AP’s Employee Relief Fund.
for breaking the news of a lawsuit alleging dozens of victims and decades of abuse at a state-run New Hampshire youth detention center. The lead plaintiff in the suit gave Ramer an exclusive interview and he allowed AP to photograph him, something no other media outlet had done. Ramer also reported that one of the plaintiff’s alleged abusers worked as a clubhouse attendant for the Boston Red Sox until he was suspended without pay in July. https://bit.ly/35U707C
The AP designated coverage of the Roman Catholic Church and its handling of sexual misconduct as a major focus in 2019, exploring myriad facets of the church’s greatest credibility crisis since the Reformation. That focus carried through the past two weeks, with three strong stories delving into various aspects of the church’s handling of abuse accusations:
– Reporter Claudia Lauer and data journalist Meghan Hoyer showed definitively that the church has failed to be fully forthcoming about the number of clergy members credibly accused of child sexual abuse.
– Investigative reporter Michael Rezendes broke the news about a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by one of Mother Teresa’s key confidants.
– Global religion editor Gary Fields, photographer Maye-E Wong and reporter Juliet Linderman delved into how, almost without exception, the church does not track the number of minorities who have been victimized by predator priests.
For illuminating work that further deepens AP’s “Reckoning” reporting on the Catholic church, Lauer, Hoyer, Rezendes, Huh, Fields, Wong and Linderman share this week’s Best of the States award.
The source’s initial tip seemed fairly run-of-the-mill for Baghdad: A late-night rocket attack hit the international airport.
But AP’s Baghdad correspondent Qassim Abdul-Zahra sensed something unusual was afoot. He alerted colleagues and kept digging, teasing out a name that set alarm bells ringing: Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and one of the Middle East’s most powerful protagonists, might have been in the car.
Soon, from three sources, came confirmation that Soleimani was dead. Regional news director Zeina Karam’s AP alert reached our customers well ahead of the competition and triggered a response by teams, across the region and beyond, that would maintain AP’s edge with all-formats coverage astounding in its breadth, speed and insight.
Usage in all formats was off the charts, both by AP customers and on social channels.
For standout work in a competitive tour de force, AP’s Middle East team of Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Zeina Karam, Jon Gambrell, Nasser Karimi, Ahmed Sami and Nasser Nasser share Best of the Week honors.
The world depends on The Associated Press during historic moments, and the impeachment of President Donald Trump was no exception.
Journalists in Washington and beyond demonstrated the AP’s extraordinary power and depth to cover all angles of the story, including the monthslong footrace to tally votes ahead of proceedings, videos filed quickly of both the hearings and of Trump’s reaction, and the ground-level view of impeachment in six election battleground states.
Stellar post-vote stories included an analysis of how impeachment would affect Trump’s legacy and the 2020 campaign, as well as an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
For impeachment coverage that consistently broke news, gave crucial context and provided customers with materials they could localize and promote, the Washington bureau and the team of journalists behind the vote tracking effort win AP’s Best of the Week.
of London bureau text and photo staffers, Europe planning desk and visiting text reporters, staff and freelance video journalists and photographers, all of whom worked tirelessly, many through the night, after weeks of buildup to cover every developing line on the U.K. election night and into the following day. In addition to Boris Johnson’s win, the all-formats report included a profile of the Conservative leader, Labour’s implosion, the implications for the Scottish independence movement, key takeaways, the effect on markets and currency, the view from the EU and – working with the team in Washington – a look at what lessons the Democrats can take from these results ahead of the 2020 election. https://apnews.com/Brexit
Photographer Maye-E Wong wanted to find a new way to tell the stories of those who suffered from clergy abuse, emphasizing that they were survivors, not victims.
Her plan: She would photograph them with a Polaroid camera, then soak the prints and release the thin fragile membranes that held the images. The images were imperfect – wrinkled and distressed – but they endure, a metaphor for the survivors they portrayed.
Wong and reporter Juliet Linderman traveled the country to interview and photograph survivors, spending days with them and listening to their stories. The result was a stunning presentation that set AP viewership records and earned praise from both the subjects and the public.
For an arresting package of inspired photography and sensitive, insightful reporting, Wong and Linderman receive this week’s Best of the States award.
It was supposed to be the safer opioid, a way to fight pain with little risk of addiction. That promise has meant much less regulation of tramadol than other opioids. And its relatively low cost has made tramadol the drug of choice in many developing countries, becoming what the United Nations calls “the other opioid crisis.”
National writer Claire Galofaro spent months researching the issue – but how to illustrate the story from a fresh perspective?
Galofaro turned to New Delhi-based correspondent Emily Schmall, who traveled to India’s Punjab state, where she talked to people struggling with addiction, visited a treatment center and gained unprecedented access to officials trying to stem the crisis.
The deeply reported story, one of the top-read pieces on AP News, also delved into tramadol’s heavy toll in Africa, and its trafficking among terrorist groups.
For their work exposing an aspect of the international opioid crisis that has received far less attention, Galofaro and Schmall win AP’s Best of the Week award.
A mother shot fatally shot in front of her 3-year-old son. A suspect killed while an officer tried to handcuff him. A Homeland Security agent was shot at a Texas high school by a U.S. marshal fumbling with equipment. These are among the more than 1,400 unintentional discharges found by Seattle reporter Martha Bellisle in an investigation that highlights the shortcomings of police weapons training.
No agency tracks how often local, state and federal officers accidentally fire their weapons. Over the course of more than a year, Bellisle exhaustively documented 1,422 unintentional discharges by 258 law enforcement agencies since 2012.
With contributions from colleagues in photo and video – including the story of an Iowa woman who was killed when an officer’s gun discharged, leaving her husband and children still scarred by the tragedy – the all-formats package received prominent play.
For an exclusive that sheds light on a virtually undocumented area of firearms safety, Bellisle earns this week’s Best of the States award.
for quick and commanding coverage of India’s worst fires in decades, where dozens of workers were trapped in a makeshift factory with little ventilation and only one way out. The team’s work beat not only international news organizations but also many local media, and included a detailed portrait of the tragedy, and the only agency live video coverage.https://bit.ly/2E9DkYLhttps://bit.ly/2qLlJmI
