AP’s multiplatform coverage of the highly anticipated arrival of Caitlin Clark’s WNBA draft class went beyond the spot news to explain the significance of the event in a way that was accessible to sports fans and nonsports fans alike. Read more
for reporting exclusively that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had halted enforcement actions in the months since the Trump administration took control of the agency. https://bit.ly/2H80X70
for an Only on AP story: An email revealed that the former CEO of a payday lending company investigated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was seeking the top job at the watchdog agency, indicating a friendlier relationship between the industry and its regulator. http://bit.ly/2H7MILR
How best to capture the story of recovering opioid users?
Chicago-based medical writer Lindsey Tanner and Atlanta-based photographer/videographer David Goldman teamed up to produce an intimate look at a diverse group of people – among them, a lawyer, a businessman and a trucker – who got caught up in the worst opioid epidemic in U.S. history.
Their illuminating package – combining Tanner's powerful text and Goldman's photos with a haunting mini-documentary – earns the Beat of the Week.
for inquiring about consumer complaints to Ford Motor Co. of carbon monoxide fumes in its Explorer SUVs. Ford shortly after offered to fix the problem. http://bit.ly/2x6aTFZ
In February, Arkansas announced a series of April executions that, if carried out, would make history in the United States: Over an 11-day period, the state would put to death eight inmates – two each on four days. No state had performed so many executions in such a short time since the Supreme Court re-instated the death penalty in 1976.
And Arkansas, which had not carried out an execution since 2005, had a curious justification for the expedited timetable: the supply of one of its three execution drugs was expiring at the end of the month. Officials were not confident they could obtain more.
Weeks before the first planned execution, a team of AP journalists in Arkansas and beyond set out to both chronicle the executions and offer deep and varied enterprise that broke news. Their work earns this week's Best of States award.
for using exclusive AP poll data to determine the top college basketball program in history. The team also wrote a detailed advisory and created an advance release plan to raise engagement among college basketball fans and colleges. http://collegebasketball.ap.org/ap-poll-all-time
The down-at-the-heels industrial city of East Chicago, Indiana, made headlines around the world in August after the mayor ordered 1,000 people to get out of a 40-year-old public-housing complex because of lead contamination.
Many residents and observers expressed surprise: How could such a problem go overlooked for so many decades?
The Chicago bureau’s Sara Burnett and Jason Keyser teamed up for several weeks of intensive document and street reporting. What they found was as disturbing as the original news: The hazard shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone – because the housing complex had been built on the former site of a lead-products factory.
For 80 years, AP has organized the longest-running college football poll of its kind. Every week through each season, AP’s marquee listing tells who’s up, who’s down and most significantly, who’s No. 1. The 2016 preseason poll will start the buzz again when it comes out this Sunday.
But in this anniversary year, AP Sports wanted to do something extra: Produce a composite poll showing which 100 teams ranked highest over the full eight decades and 1,103 polls. The result – anchored by Ralph Russo, Paul Montella and Howie Rumberg – was an exclusive package that dramatically moved the needle on digital, social media and in print, while further boosting the profile of the AP Top 25 poll. It earns the Beat of the Week.
Responding to AP’s call for ambitious journalism in 2019, Holbrook “Bert” Mohr of the U.S. investigative team tossed out an idea during a brainstorming session: Authorities in Mississippi had found vapes containing fentanyl and synthetic marijuana in stores near Mohr’s home. What caught his eye was that the product was labeled as CBD.
That led to a collaboration by the Investigations and the Health and Science teams that would offer not just the exclusive results of laboratory testing — finding cheap and illegal synthetic marijuana instead of natural CBD in vapes and edibles — but also telling details about the people who bring dangerous products to market.
The “Spiked CBD” package broke through. It was easily the top story on AP Mobile, and Mohr’s bylined story appeared on the front page of at least 23 newspapers; it was teased on the front of nearly 100 others.
For identifying and leading a collaborative investigative project that connected with customers and readers, Mohr receives this week’s Best of the States award.
collaborated across formats while overcoming difficult access and logistical hurdles to produce fast, distinctive, widely used coverage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian in South Florida and South Carolina.From breaking news to enterprise pieces to an array of compelling video and photos, AP’s sweeping coverage received extraordinary play across formats, used by major broadcast, print and online outlets.Read more
A team of AP journalists in India and the United States provided an unprecedented cross-format look at the Indian shrimp industry, capturing labor and environmental abuses by the world’s top exporter of shrimp to America.Read more
In the runup to Super Tuesday, The Associated Press showed why it’s at the top of the class when it comes to elections coverage.
As Super Tuesday neared, the AP had an issue on its hands: how will it call races that night when it would have no VoteCast poll — but the TV networks had their exit polling, which could have put the AP at a competitive disadvantage? Serena Hawkins, data scientist for AP’s Decision Team, got to work.
In just two weeks, she researched, developed, tested and deployed a new approach to race calling that allowed the AP to declare Donald Trump and Joe Biden winners in several states with a very small return of counted votes.
That new model, used by the AP on Super Tuesday, put AP’s race calls ahead in states where the TV networks didn’t have a poll, and only a few minutes behind in states where they did — and with no errors in its calls.
Meanwhile, the AP, for the first time, was able to deliver its vote count directly to news consumers through a new immersive elections experience on APNews.
The effort was captained by development lead Linda Gorman, with team members Ryan Best, Michelle Minkoff Carlson, Chaithra Chandraiah, Shelly Cheng, Chad Day, Phil Holm, Dan Kempton, Humera Lodhi, Maya Sweedler, Pablo Barria Urenda and Robert Weston. On the night of Super Tuesday, the recirculation rate for these pages was, in a word, stratospheric.
For all these reasons, Serena Hawkins and the Elections Data Visualizations Team are Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP’s team in India provided visually compelling, richly reported, all-format coverage of one of the country’s most defining and contentious events, the opening of a controversial Hindu temple built on a razed mosque.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a controversial Hindu temple, it marked a political triumph for the populist leader under whose watch the line between religion and state has largely eroded in the constitutionally secular country. The temple sits on a site where Hindu mobs tore down a mosque three decades ago, its fraught history still an open wound for many Muslims.
AP’s cross-format team in Delhi and on ground in Ayodhya provided visually rich and nuanced coverage that was both thoughtful and insightful. Photographer Rajesh Kumar Singh was the only international photographer who managed to secure access to the high-security temple complex to exclusively cover the select gathering of invitees and arrival of Modi. AP was first among the global agencies to file self-shot images of the event while other agencies had to rely on handout images.
Singh, senior video journalist Rishi Lekhi, and stringer Biswajeet Banerjee kept the inputs steadily flowing in from Ayodhya, including live coverage from outside the venue, while Shonal Ganguly, Saaliq Sheikh and Krutika Pathi in Delhi helped with a quick turnaround of both text and video edits, enriching them with useful background and voices of ordinary Indians.
For playing a key role in bringing images of this momentous event to global audiences — and putting it in context — Rajesh Kumar Singh, Rishi Lekhi, Biswajeet Banerjee, Sheikh Saaliq, Shonal Ganguly and Krutika Pathi are Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP pitched an ambitious idea: With the 75th anniversary of The Associated Press Top 25 men’s basketball poll coming up this season, could the AP find a way to sift the data — 75 years of weekly polls — to come up with a rundown of the greatest teams of all time?Read more
AP leveraged a decade-long relationship with South Carolina pepper grower Ed Currie to become the first mainstream outlet to report on a record-setting hot pepper, delivering scorching play with a multiformat package on “Pepper X.”Read more
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.
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.
Many of the AP’s most iconic images from the 1998–99 war in Kosovo were the products of video crew Vojislav Stjepanovic and Radul Radovanovic in Bosnia.
Their deep experience meant they knew something big was about to happen when minor disturbances broke out following mayoral victories by ethnic Albanians in Serb-majority towns where Serbs overwhelmingly boycotted the elections.
Soon, the situation in northern Kosovo unraveled as ethnic Serb demonstrators began clashing with NATO-led peacekeepers. Stjepanovic and Radovanovic were at the heart of the action, documenting the story and broadcasting it live, even with Molotov cocktails and tear gas flying just a stone’s throw away.
Some journalists fled the scene, and others were targeted while trying to cover the story. Stjepanovic and Radovanovic found a balcony just above the fray that offered a wide view of the clashes, where soldiers were being pelted with rocks and firearms were being discharged. They delivered live shots through it all, a feat unmatched by local channels, let alone international competitors.
When the violence finally cooled, 30 international soldiers and more than 50 protesters had been injured. The crew delivered 11 hours of live coverage through it, and Belgrade producer Ivana Bzganovic swiftly produced multiple edits that won hundreds of hits.
For showing immense bravery in providing images no one else could, Stjepanovic, Radovanovic and Bzganovic are this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP delivered stellar work on the 2022 midterm elections with fast, accurate vote count and race calling, engaging explanatory journalism, unparalleled insight into the minds of voters thanks to AP VoteCast survey methodology, and ambitious, robust all-formats coverage. That teamwork chronicled an unexpectedly successful election for Democrats and the defeat of many candidates who supported baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.
The key to that performance was collaboration among formats, teams, departments and more across the entire AP, not just on Election Day but in the weeks and months leading up to Nov. 8 and beyond. That effort included a team of 60 race callers, AP’s expanded national politics team and its new democracy team, 30 live video cameras across the U.S., over 80 photographers and much more, all complementing the footprint of AP’s 50-state on-the-ground staff.
For reinforcing the cooperative’s longstanding reputation as the foundation of U.S. election coverage, AP’s vast, tireless U.S. elections team earns Best of the Week — First Winner honors.
