AP spent months building sources and conducting interviews to trace the declining friendship between Amazonian Indigenous activist Chief Raoni and Belgian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Dutilleux.Read more
AP’s Global Entertainment team knew the game had changed when it came to the Grammys. They knew that the sense of the moment — in the moment — was going to win the day. And they were right.
Collaborating with Digital colleagues, the team delivered unprecedented audiences to APNews through two real-time vehicles: a hosted live video show streamed on YouTube and a multiformat Live Blog. It was a success in two spaces crucial to bringing in new audiences to AP, and the viewership on both reflects how AP can engage viewers on high-value entertainment events. For this major accomplishment that put AP ahead and in the spotlight on one of entertainment’s most important evenings, Global Entertainment’s Live Blog and Live Stream teams and their Digital colleagues are awarded Best of the Week — First Winner.
Hail Mary? Hail Julio. As swarms of players and media surrounded Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce after the Kansas City Chiefs’ AFC championship win, photographer Julio Cortez captured the perfect shot: the couple kissing on the field, Swift’s hand pressed against Kelce’s cheek. It was an intimate moment amid chaos, one that only Cortez — AP’s chief photographer for Texas and Oklahoma, temporarily returned to Baltimore — got. Other outlets made photos of the couple embracing, but Cortez had the singular — and viral — angle.
Before Sunday’s game, the only photos of Swift’s football attendee era were made in tunnels or from afar as she watched in luxury suites. But Cortez knew that if the Chiefs punched their ticket to another Super Bowl, players’ friends and families would end up on the field. With AP’s Matt Slocum, Alex Brandon and Nick Wass in their assigned on-field positions, Cortez called an audible, walking around the stage to find Swift. A believer in being “pushy but professional,” Cortez “sweet-talked” bodyguards to get into unique position. Swift and Kelce’s reunion was, well, swift. As Kelce “gave her the fastest kiss,” Cortez jumped in front of the NFL Films camera, raising his own over a guard’s head. About a minute after the photo was made, photo editor Mike Stewart knew it was the shot of the game, affixing the golden APTOPIX stamp. It was immediately picked up by hundreds, rocketing around the world with usage by customers ranging from The New York Times, People to India’s Hindustan Times and Argentina’s La Voz.
For an image that’s assuredly a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Cortez is 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.
The AP Bangkok bureau speedily responded to reports online about a firework explosion in central Thailand that killed 23 by initially utilizing social media to source and verify information for all formats and to beat competitors in reporting the first accident of its kind in the country this year.Read more
When North Korea declared a major policy change in how it will treat South Korea, AP’s Seoul bureau beat the competition from start to finish, with both urgent spot coverage of the crucial story and with unrivaled analysis that highlighted the difference of this development from the steady drumbeat of other North Korean provocations. Read more
A dash between two of Texas’ biggest cities quickly put AP at the scene of a downtown blast in all formats, coming away with widely used visuals and strong reporting.Read more
Thanks to teamwork across multiple departments and formats, AP dominated coverage of a tragic school shooting in Perry, Iowa, by being the first with photos from the scene, the first to have interviews with students, and the only media outlet to secure an interview with the mother of the 11-year-old victim, as well as exclusive photos of him.Read more
A series of capstone Maui wildfire stories that ran in the final week of 2023 — one focused on Lahaina’s losses and another on its uncertain future — showcase fruits of the extraordinary effort, commitment and selfless teamwork exhibited by AP’s Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Hawaii reporting team over months amid endless challenges to share Lahaina’s plight with the world.Read more
Underage Rohingya girls are forced into abusive marriages in Malaysia so their families in Bangladesh can eat. In safehouses, AP met with child brides who managed to get unlocked from their bedrooms to share their plights.
Human rights workers warned it would be almost impossible to track the girls down. Yet an AP team not only found them, but interviewed them without putting them at risk of reprisal.
Investigative correspondent Kristen Gelineau, based in Sydney, Australia, tracked down an advocate in Malaysia who was herself a Rohingya child bride and carefully coordinated a plan with each girl. Some concocted an excuse to leave their homes and met with AP at safehouses. Many simply could not get unlocked.
The team coordinated interview times with the girls so they could arrive at their homes after their husbands had left for work and leave well before they returned.
Indonesia video journalist and business correspondent Victoria Milko filmed in their dark and claustrophobic apartments, capturing both the youth and isolation of the girls while protecting their anonymity.
McKinnon de Kuyper made a heartbreaking edit of the video, taking advantage of previous filming of Rohingya families who were victims of a boat drowning by video journalist Garjon Al-emrun.
For allowing the AP to be the first media to give these girls a voice, Gelineau, Milko, de Kuyper and Al-emrun are Best of the Week — First Winners.
The first word came at 6:25 a.m., Oct. 7 local time: Red alerts were issued via WhatsApp for several locations in Israel. Sirens could be heard in Tel Aviv. AP journalists saw rockets being shot from Rafah in Gaza towards Israel. Then word filtered in from the Israeli army that there were numerous security breaches in central and southern Israel. More rockets fell, with Israeli ambulances dispatched to areas where residents had reported strikes. Taken together, it told of an ominous new day in the region.
The first of what would be many AP news alerts moved 20 minutes later: Israel says Palestinian militants have infiltrated into Israeli territory from Gaza.
What unfolded over the days was massive in its scope: The militant armed group Hamas executed a well-planned surprise attack on what would normally be a joyful holiday, Simchat Torah.
The Israeli army, caught off guard, struggled for days to regain control of the invaded towns. Israel released counterstrikes into Gaza, killing hundreds. Over the next 10 days the toll would rise to thousands dead in Gaza and in Israel.
Throughout the conflict, the teams in Israel and Gaza worked with courage, determination and excellence under extremely challenging circumstances to report on the painful events affecting them and their families. They earn Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP investigated discipline disparities experienced by kids with disabilities and an increase in “emergency petitions” — when a school orders a child to go to the ER for a psychiatric evaluation.Read more
AP spotted word of a shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, putting into motion resources from near and afar to report on a big story in a city that’s home to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.Read more
Relying on relentless source work and their joint years of experience, Joshua Goodman and Eric Tucker landed twin scoops on the arrest and indictment of a former career American diplomat charged with being a secret agent for communist Cuba for decades.
Manuel Rocha, who was formerly ambassador to Bolivia, was accused of engaging in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at least 1981, the year he joined the U.S. foreign service. While the case was short on specifics of how Rocha may have assisted the island nation, it provided a vivid case study of how Cuba and its sophisticated intelligence services seek to target, and flip, U.S. officials.
First word came to Latin America correspondent Goodman from a trusted source who called on a Friday evening to say the FBI had arrested Rocha earlier that day at his home in Miami but details were under seal. He enlisted Washington-based Tucker to see if his national security sources could help shake anything loose about the case.
Their break came Sunday — with the case still sealed — when sources gave them enough information to report that Rocha was arrested on federal charges of being an agent of the Cuban government. Their urgent story, which included extensive background on Rocha’s diplomatic stops in Bolivia, Argentina, Havana and elsewhere, staked out AP’s ownership of the case.
More details followed the next morning with another AP break, when Goodman and Tucker obtained the sealed case affidavit from highly placed sources nearly an hour before it was filed, allowing them to trounce the competition with a fast news alert and urgent series.
For putting AP far ahead in revealing what the Justice Department called one of the highest-reaching infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent, Goodman and Tucker are Best of the Week — First Winner.
A cross-team collaboration about a dozen years in the making pays off despite threats from a tropical storm and deadly wildfire, resulting in a tale of the widespread devotion to two Catholic saints who cared for patients banished to Hawaii’s leprosy colony.Read more
Years of experience covering demonstrations in France were vital in the AP’s ability to outshine its competitors in coverage of a demonstration against antisemitism that drew more than 100,000 people.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 explored a technological advance that changes the game for Deaf and hard-of-hearing football players.Read more
Longtime cultivation of a source paid off with the AP getting exclusive access to an important new study that provided insight into how the federal justice system handles terrorism cases.Read more
After authorities discovered more than 100 decaying bodies at a Colorado funeral home in early October, speculation spread that families may have received fake ashes. Thanks to dogged reporting, the AP broke the news that confirmed the rumors with an all-formats story.Read more
