When reports emerged of a shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, AP quickly assessed that it was more than an ordinary shooting.Read more
AP broke the story of an unassuming Hinsdale, New Hampshire groundskeeper who gave his fortune to the community, ahead of a holiday dedicated to giving thanks.Read more
AP scored an exclusive interview with a candidate in the state’s high-stakes legislative elections who was revealed during the campaign to have once live-streamed sex videos with her husband on a pornographic website.Read more
After reporting in June that thieves made off with at least $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funds, AP dug deeper to answer a simple question. What were the most unusual purchases the crooks made with the cash they grabbed?Read more
Through dogged reporting and the extensive use of public records, AP uncovered how an artificial intelligence-powered tool has fallen short of its claim to be a technological revolution for the world of child welfare.Read more
AP reported for a year on the 2022 fire of the Trinity Spirit, an aging oil tanker that exploded while anchored off the coast of Nigeria — the ship fit a pattern of old oil tankers put to work storing and extracting oil around the world even while on the brink of mechanical breakdowns.Read more
AP explored a technological advance that changes the game for Deaf and hard-of-hearing football players.Read more
AP didn’t just expose gaps in a federally mandated early childhood intervention program, we also explored the heartbreaking cost with an intimate, all-formats examination of the tangible impact on children with developmental delays.Read more
It was in mid-July when Las Vegas reporters Rio Yamat and Ken Ritter began working their sources, after the police raided the home of a suspect in connection with an investigation into the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. The result months later was a super scoop on a riveting story nearly three decades in the making.
Through their deep and extensive sourcing in law enforcement and criminal justice, Yamat and Ritter sought to penetrate a grand jury case shrouded in secrecy. For months, they regularly contacted everyone who was likely involved. It all paid off when they learned they should prepare for an indictment in mid-September. From there, it was a lesson in patience and persistence.
After months where Yamat and Ritter attended court hearings and drafted prep for a potential break, Yamat began hearing rumblings an indictment was imminent. She and Ritter were able to nail down the next morning from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge that Duane “Keffe D” Davis had been taken into custody on suspicion of murder in Tupac's killing.
They broke the news at 9:27 a.m. PDT. The alert published 93 minutes before the court convened for grand jury returns when the indictment would be made public.
For dogged reporting and deep source work that allowed AP to dominate a story that’s mystified fans for decades, Yamat and Ritter are this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP employed the traditional Afghan “box camera” to document how life has changed in Afghanistan in peacetime, for better and worse, two years after U.S. troops left and the Taliban returned to power.Read more
led an all-formats team to look at the impact of the mine on Native Americans who have long lived in the area.Read more.
AP was the first media to write the story of the likely cause of the Maui fires — bare copper electrical line that sparked on contact and power poles that couldn’t stand up to the wind.Read more
On the eve of the first world track championships since Bowie’s passing, AP sportswriters Eddie Pells and Pat Graham teamed up to report exclusively on the mental health struggles of Tori Bowie that led up to the star athlete’s death April 23 from complications during childbirth at the age of 32.
The two had covered Bowie, who won three medals at the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Games, for many years and had heard whispers of her difficulties. A few weeks after her death, the autopsy listed the cause as “complications in childbirth.”
While other outlets pursued the angle that Black women suffer disproportionately from pregnancy complications, Pells opted to explore another dimension of her story, her struggles with mental health.
He sought out people at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and within track and field, to find out how a world-famous champion, who was eight months into what would be considered an at-risk pregnancy, came to die alone at home without medical care or anyone to look after her.
For sensitively telling the story of a great athlete who became isolated from her peers and died tragically alone in part because of neglect of her mental health difficulties, Pells and Graham are Best of the Week — First Winner.
When a wildfire broke out in Maui and obliterated the centuries-old town of Lahaina, staff in AP’s Pacific Northwest sprang into action. Honolulu’s Audrey McAvoy was on the ground within hours, leveraging the AP’s unique Hawaii footprint for the first of many days of aggressive coverage that allowed AP to own the story from the beginning.
McAvoy was quickly joined by Portland, Oregon, reporter Claire Rush, who canceled her vacation; photographer Rick Bowmer and video journalists Ty O’Neil and Haven Daley. Jennifer Kelleher joined the reporting effort from Honolulu, where she anchored the story for days with help from Chris Weber in Los Angeles and worked longtime sources, including Gov. Josh Green, to keep AP ahead. Rush, O’Neil and Bowmer slept in an SUV for two days in the burn zone.
On Aug. 9, apnews.com received 7.6 million page views — a new record and a 32% increase over traffic the previous Wednesday, and the following day also broke previous records with 7.5 million page views.
The Live Updates fixture, artfully anchored by a changing cast of characters, was also a huge winner for AP and served as a “search tree” that led readers back to AP’s content again and again.
For extraordinary coverage of the devastating fire, accomplished despite huge logistical challenges, the AP Maui team earns Best of the Week — First Winner.
In more than 30 stories dating to early May, AP journalists covered all aspects of the trial of Robert Bowers for killing 11 people inside a Pittsburgh synagogue building in 2018.Read more
AP spent months reporting the issue of tornado deaths in mobile homes and why they still happen despite being known and avoidable.Read more
When a Texas sheriff’s story about a mass shooting didn’t add up, Dallas-based reporter Jake Bleiberg dug in.
During the four-day search for a man accused of fatally shooting five of his neighbors in April, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told a crush of reporters that his deputies got to the scene in 11 minutes, but the suspect had vanished. Bleiberg was among the Texas reporters covering the shooting who heard from area residents that deputies rarely responded to calls faster than 30 minutes. As he worked the phone to get a fuller picture, Bleiberg connected with a source who provided him with the report of a police consultant who county officials hired to examine the sheriff’s office. Bleiberg quickly authenticated the document and headed down to the rural corner of East Texas to continue reporting along with video journalist Lekan Oyekanmi and freelance photographer Michael Wyke.
They conducted more than 20 interviews with current and former deputies, county officials and residents. Bleiberg successfully pressed for the release of public records related to the shooting and obtained revealing court documents and evidence gathered in a whistleblower lawsuit against the sheriff. The reporting revealed that the latest inaccuracies were part of years’ worth of accusations against the sheriff, including neglecting basic police work, evidence of the improper seizure of tens of thousands of dollars of property, ignoring previous concerns over the alleged shooter, and his deputies failing to follow up on reports of 4,000 crimes — including sexual and child abuse.
For a tireless effort to reveal years of corruption accusations and dysfunction previously unknown outside of the local area, Jake Bleiberg earns Best of the Week — First Winner.
The Paris suburb of Nanterre was at the heart of violent protests after a French policeman killed a 17-year-old at a traffic stop, and AP journalists in Paris worked around the clock and at a competitive disadvantage to document the unrest and its aftermath.
Photographer Christophe Ena was among the first on the scene, taking AP’s first photos and video of flames in Nanterre on the first night and alerting our customers — and competitors — of the gravity of the story. He and a photographer from the European Pressphoto Agency were the only international journalists on the scene at the time and worked together to ensure each other’s safety as tensions rose around them.
Cara Anna, arriving from Nairobi, was among just a few journalists to cover the boy’s funeral and discreetly filmed a brief video of the cemetery where people were gathering to mourn. It was the only footage published of the event, but also respected the organizers’ request not to have cameras at the funeral itself.
For sensitive, honest work in unpredictable, often hostile conditions to show a part of France tourists see rarely and understand even less, Ena and Anna earn this week’s first citation for Best of the Week.
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.
exposed the truth: The number of e-cigarettes on the market has exploded in recent years, a surge driven almost entirely by disposable e-cigarettes imported from China.Read more.
