Best of the Week — First Winner

Unique AP visual investigation points to 600 dead in airstrike on Mariupol theater

A deeply reported, innovative and meticulous AP investigation determined that the deadliest apparent war crime so far in Ukraine — the March 16 Mariupol theater airstrike — likely killed about 600 people, twice as many as previously reported.

AP’s first full-blown visual investigation drew on survivors’ accounts, photos, video, experts and a 3D digital model of the theater to reconstruct what happened that day. The resulting package offered a vivid, detailed narrative of the events inside the theater, including elements that had not previously been reported, all delivered in an arresting presentation.

For a remarkable investigation that harnessed the power of all formats to break news, the team of Hinnant, Ritzel, Chernov, Stepanenko and Goodman is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP delivers fast, comprehensive, all-formats coverage of Uvalde, Texas, school shooting

AP journalists were on the U.S-Mexico border for an immigration assignment May 24 when they got word of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. They quickly gathered their gear and rushed to Robb Elementary School, where they found chaotic scenes of law enforcement surrounding the school. The staffers immediately went to work providing photos and live video.

That swift response to the unfolding tragedy made the AP the first national news organization on the scene and set the tone for the rest of the week. As more staff deployed, AP delivered dominant, all-formats coverage that explored with sensitivity not only the shooting that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead, but inconsistencies in the actions and statements of police — and much more.

Readers and customers responded with exceptional engagement.

For a powerful example of the AP at its finest on a major news story that has led to an outpouring of sympathy for the families, questions about police practices and the latest reckoning on guns and school safety, the AP Uvalde coverage team earns Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exclusive coverage of Haitian migrants ashore in Cuba

delivered exclusive all-formats coverage as a single dilapidated vessel that set out for the United States carrying 842 Haitians landed instead on the coast of central Cuba. The migrants, who had been abandoned at sea, appeared to be the largest group yet in a swelling exodus of people fleeing widespread gang violence and instability in Haiti.Video journalist Gonzalez and photographer Espinosa captured images that showed the distress and fatigue in the faces of the migrants, some of them women with small children and even a newborn baby. Producer Duran was instrumental in working with the Cuban authorities and medical team to get unrestricted access to the migrants while feeding information and interviews to Rodriguez, who crafted the text story in Havana.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Sweeping, sensitive coverage in aftermath of Buffalo shooting

led AP’s comprehensive all-formats coverage in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket. In the week that followed the racist attack, the team on the ground captured the sorrow and outrage of the city’s Black community, even as they reported on court appearances and press briefings.The team delivered sensitive and compelling enterprise pieces, including a chronicle of the victims’ last day, personal stories of grief and anger, how residents might find healing, and what the loss of the area’s only supermarket means to the fabric of the community.That work by the Buffalo team was complemented by a sweeping array of insightful stories from AP journalists around the country.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

Ukrainian medic gives AP exclusive bodycam video revealing the tragedy of Mariupol

A celebrated Ukrainian medic recorded her front-line work in Mariupol on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail, then arranged to get it to AP journalists in the besieged city before she was captured by Russian forces. AP then smuggled it out to the world inside a tampon.

The result was a remarkable all-formats package showing firsthand the horror of the war in the devastated Ukrainian port city, while drawing attention to the Russian treatment of prisoners as well as the number of prominent Ukrainians, like medic Yuliia Paievska, who have disappeared.

The piece was AP’s most-engaged and most-viewed story of the week on apnews.com, and drew enormous media attention.

For a riveting look at the tragedy in Mariupol, and shining a needed and compassionate light on the fate of a courageous medic, the team of Vasilisa Stepanenko, Lori Hinnant, Mstyslav Chernov, Alyssa Goodman and Serginho Roosblad shares AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Teamwork, sourcing put AP ahead on Buffalo mass shooting

teamed up to deliver fast, factual breaking coverage of Saturday’s racist mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, then turned to stories of the victims and a community in mourning.In the chaotic first hours after the shooting, AP avoided the erroneous reporting of other outlets, including false reports that the gunman was dead. Sharp source work had AP accurately reporting the death toll ahead of the official news conference, and that authorities suspected the shooter was driven by racism.The all-formats coverage was AP’s top-performing story of the day, by far, widely used and credited by AP customers and drawing more than 1 million pageviews on AP News.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP Exclusive: Inside the 11-day search for escaped Alabama inmate and his jailer accomplice

As the search for Alabama fugitives Casey White and Vicky White captured the attention of the world, Washington-based federal law enforcement reporter Mike Balsamo reached out, working his network of sources in the Justice Department and the U.S. Marshals Service for details.

Balsamo also connected with the U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Alabama, knowing he would be the person most likely to have the inside information that would enable AP to put together a clear timeline of a messy escape saga littered with gaps and confusing accounts.

That contact turned out to be pivotal after the pursuit came to a violent end in Indiana on May 9. The marshal’s exclusive account of the 11-day search, coupled with details Balsamo picked up from other sources, gave AP a story rich with previously unreported detail and context. It also made for an exceptionally easy-to-follow narrative. The resulting story played widely, from Alabama to Australia.

For using all his resources to distinguish AP’s coverage on this extremely competitive story, Mike Balsamo is AP’s Best of the Week – First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP looks at real-world issues of viability and the earliest babies

visited Eutaw, Alabama, to better understand the issue of viability — a key word in the superheated debate over abortion — as experienced by families who know what it means to have a baby born at the edge of life.Ungar, who has covered maternal and newborn health for years, knew doctors were getting better at keeping very premature babies alive. She reviewed data and research, interviewed physicians and was connected to Michelle Butler who was in just her fifth month of pregnancy when she she gave birth to twins, including Curtis, the world’s earliest surviving premature baby.Butler let the all-formats team of Ungar, Wang and Dill into family’s life. What emerged was an emotional narrative of extreme joy and profound loss, explaining the science and ethics involved and bringing deeply reported, balanced, real-world context to one of the biggest, most provocative issues of the year.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP documents North Dakota lawmaker’s taxpayer-funded travel

scooped North Dakota media by revealing just how extensively — and expensively — a state senator had traveled on the taxpayer’s dime.MacPherson obtained documents showing that Republican Sen. Ray Holmberg, who recently announced he would end his 46-year-career following a report that he had traded scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges, had run up more than 14 times the average travel expenses for the state’s lawmakers over the past decade, on trips that included China, Puerto Rico and New Orleans.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Deep reporting tells of Black Kansas teen’s in-custody death

were the first to piece together video, records and interviews for an in-depth, multiformat story outlining how a Black teen in Kansas ended up in foster care and died at a juvenile intake center after being restrained on his stomach for 40 minutes.AP had written previously about the death of Cedric “C.J.” Lofton, but Kansas City reporter Hollingsworth sensed a backstory waiting to be told. Her exhaustive reporting and Sheridan’s revealing video tell the story of a troubled youth and the disturbing confluence of events and decisions leading to his death.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Only on AP: Behind-the-scenes with women’s NCAA champions

had exclusive behind-the-scenes access during top-ranked South Carolina’s run to the women’s NCAA championship, the pair delivering unique content in the highly competitive environment of the game’s biggest stage.South Carolina sports writer Iacobelli has established a good rapport with basketball coach Dawn Staley, who allowed him to join the team during the Final Four in Minneapolis. He teamed up with Des Moines, Iowa-based photographer Charlie Neibergall to produce a widely used package that moved the morning after the Gamecocks captured their second national title under Staley.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Algorithm screening for child neglect raises bias concerns

teamed up on an exclusive package that revealed concerns over racial disparity in an algorithm used by one child welfare agency to help decide if a family should be investigated by child protective services.Long-term source work allowed the reporters to obtain research on the impact of the tool used to support social workers in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, who make split-second decisions meant to protect children from neglect. The research showed the algorithm flagging a disproportionate number of Black children for a “mandatory” neglect investigation when compared with white children, and that social workers disagreed with the risk scores the tool produced about one-third of the time.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

Flawless source work, preparation deliver all-formats scoop on US-Russia prisoner swap

In a textbook display of outstanding source work and planning, Eric Tucker and Matthew Lee acted on a tip to score a massive scoop on a stunning U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange that happened despite heightened tensions between the countries.

In the process, the pair showed the rewards of careful, long-term source-building, a model of how to prepare in all formats to put the AP ahead of the competition the moment the news broke, and examples of how to build on a big story with smart sidebars in-cycle and a compelling follow-up story that offered new, behind-the-scenes details.

Their efforts paid off handsomely on Wednesday when Lee got the green light that the exchange had taken place, allowing AP to push out an alert and full story accompanied by photos and video, well before any Western media competitors were even aware the swap had happened.

For their exhaustive, comprehensive work that scooped everyone on the surprising swap, Tucker and Lee share AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats team exposes housing crisis for college students

exposed a growing housing crisis hitting college campuses across the U.S.: A surge in the number of new students who deferred college during the worst of the COVID crisis has strained campus housing nationwide, leaving many students homeless, sleeping in cars or living in motel rooms while attending school — or causing them to further delay their education.Working with AP’s housing coverage team, San Francisco reporter Har found that while the college housing crunch may be most acute in California, it impacts college students nationwide.With video from Terry Chea and photos by Eric Risberg, digital storyteller Samantha Shotzbarger created a strong presentation that performed well both on AP platforms and with customers, but its real impact was on Facebook, where it was viewed 2.4 million times.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

Inside a Lviv apartment building, AP team gives a glimpse of life for displaced Ukrainians

London-based news director Susie Blann wanted to tell the story of how the city of Lviv had welcomed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled their homes during the Russian invasion but chose to remain in their country.

Blann, joined by photographer Nariman El-Mofty, video journalist Renata Brito and text reporter Cara Anna, looked behind the doors of one Lviv apartment block, earning the trust of people from Irpin, Kyiv and Kharkiv who had found temporary housing there and were willing to tell their stories.

The result was a remarkable presentation produced in collaboration with Natalie Castañeda, giving a deeply personal glimpse into the lives of some of the millions of people displaced by war.

For their tireless, resourceful work in demanding circumstances, the team of Blann, Anna, El-Mofty, Brito and Castañeda is the AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Video shows Lyoya shot in back of head by officer

teamed up with colleagues elsewhere in the country to provide multiformat coverage of the release by Grand Rapids, Michigan, police of video showing the April 4 shooting death of motorist Patrick Lyoya. Video showed Lyoya, a Black man, facing the ground when he was fatally shot in the back of the head by a police officer after a traffic stop, a brief foot chase and struggle over a stun gun.In addition to AP’s spot coverage and video analysis, distinctive enterprise in ensuing days examined a gap in the police officer’s body camera video, an explainer on what prosecutors will use to determine any charges, and how police stops of Black people are often filled with fear and anxiety and can end in deadly use of force.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP profiles amputee running 102 marathons — in 102 days

tells the feel-good story we needed, in the person of Jacky Hunt-Broersma — an amputee athlete from South Africa who’s closing in on a new world record: running 102 marathons in as many days.New England editor Kole himself has a dozen and a half marathons under his laces, and his social media feeds buzz with compelling news from fellow runners.But Hunt-Broersma’s story was special. Kole surfaced it for a global audience, telling the incredible story of a woman who lost one of her legs to a rare cancer, only to set a grueling goal: covering the 26.2-mile marathon distance each day for 102 days, all on a carbon-fiber prothesis.The story, pegged to Monday's 126th running of the Boston Marathon, won widespread play, readership and social media interaction.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

Perseverance lands AP interview with Ukrainian president; team in Bucha documents evidence of war crimes

With a dedication to continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine, the AP teams in and around Kyiv landed an interview with the Ukrainian president and offered a definitive all-formats chronicle of the mass killings in Bucha.

In the capital, AP journalists relentlessly pursued an interview with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Asia-Pacific news director Adam Schreck, video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and photographer Evgeniy Maloletka eventually sat down with the president in a bunker-like government building, the dramatic setting adding to the power of the all-formats interview.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Kyiv, reporter Cara Anna and a team of visual journalists brought the horror of life and death in Bucha to readers around the world, walking the streets and talking with witnesses to the murders and other abuses under Russian occupation of the town. The team saw at least a dozen uncollected bodies and talked with two dozen survivors and witnesses, each telling horrific stories.

The teams’ coverage received strong play and reader engagement, a sign that AP’s customers and audience are still keenly interested in accurate, definitive accounts of the war.

For shedding light on an increasingly dark era for Ukraine, we honor Adam Schreck, Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Cara Anna, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Rodrigo Abd, Vadim Ghirda and Felipe Dana as AP’s Best of the Week — First Winners.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Ukraine visuals document an exceptionally dark chapter of the war; intelligence says aides misled Putin

AP teams have again dominated coverage of war in Ukraine on two fronts, this time in horrifying images of civilians killed in Bucha and surrounding areas outside Kyiv, and in stories out of Washington and London, where AP was first with a report that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aides have been misleading him about the war.

Recently declassified information from a reliable source led to Washington’s scoop that Putin was reportedly “misinformed by his advisors about how badly the Russian military is performing.” AP’s story beat the competition and scored sky-high reader engagement, and a smart follow-up out of London delved into the strategic value of declassifying such intelligence.

On the ground in Ukraine, AP video and photojournalists arrived Saturday in Bucha, outside Kyiv, after Russian forces were ousted. There they found civilians lying dead in the streets, destroyed Russian military equipment and dead Russian servicemen. The following day the AP journalists were first to record the bodies of eight men who were killed execution style, as well as a mass grave and the bodies of a village mayor and her family.

The grim images define one of the darkest chapters on the war so far and raise fears of what may be unfolding in areas as yet inaccessible to journalists.

For their vital role documenting this brutal episode of the war, and for revealing reports of failures in the Kremlin’s intelligence at the highest levels, the journalism of Nebi Qena, Sasha Stashevsky, Vadim Ghirda, Andrea Rosa and Rodrigo Abd in Ukraine, Aamer Madhani and Nomaan Merchant in Washington, and Jill Lawless in London receives AP’s Best of The Week — First Winner honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Trooper gave recorded interview on Greene’s fatal arrest

obtained a never-before-released, internal affairs interview with the Louisiana state trooper considered the most violent in the deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene. This was the latest in a string of AP exclusives on Greene’s death — even federal prosecutors did not know the recording existed until AP published it.In the two-hour interview. Hollingsworth admits to holding Greene down and bashing him in the head with a flashlight. But Hollingsworth portrays himself as the victim, saying he feared for his life, even as video played over and over shows the white troopers stunning, punching and dragging Greene as he appeared to surrender.Read more