for analyzing census data to show that rising sea levels and fierce hurricanes have failed to stop relentless population growth in southwest Florida and south Texas in recent years. http://to.pbs.org/2fiXCX4
In the weeks after Jocelyn Gecker’s bombshell investigation detailing multiple sexual harassment allegations against Placido Domingo, competitors were out in full force, trying to produce their own stories about women who had encounters with the opera superstar.
But only the AP was able to advance the story, offering the accounts of an additional 11 women who said the legend had behaved inappropriately, including one who said on the record that Domingo insisted on kissing her and later forcefully grabbed her bare breast under her robe. In addition, backstage staff told the Jocelyns – AP’s Gecker and Noveck – how they strove to keep young women from ever being alone with Domingo.
No one could match the pair’s reporting, which produced one of the most-read stories on AP’s platform and formed the basis of stories by many other media outlets. Meanwhile, more opera companies announced they were canceling or reassessing their relationship with Domingo.
For remarkable source building and reporting that continued to give AP ownership of this highly competitive story, Gecker and Noveck earn this week’s Best of the States award.
A groundbreaking collaboration among California newspapers and The Associated Press started with a tweet.
Northern California News Editor Juliet Williams saw on Twitter that the editor of The Sacramento Bee, a McClatchy paper, was driving to meet with the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record, a MediaNews paper, to talk about wildfire coverage. Williams reached out, offered the AP’s help, and a partnership was born, with the goal of illuminating problems and pointing to potential solutions to California’s increasingly deadly wildfires.
The results: nearly a dozen stories, including an analysis of data by McClatchy and AP Los Angeles-based data journalist Angeliki Kastanis revealing that more than 350,000 Californians live in towns and cities almost entirely within zones of very high wildfire risk. An analysis also found that a 2008 building code for California’s fire-prone regions can make the difference in whether homes burn or not, but there’s little retrofitting of older homes.
The partnership’s next installment was focused on evacuation planning, revealing that many communities wouldn’t share the information or didn’t have an adequate plan, or any plan at all. Data analysis by USA TODAY Network-California showed many communities had too few roads to get everyone out.
We heavily publicized the package and play was impressive, with hundreds of downloads of the first two installments. Many outlets used the data to report their own stories about local fire risks. And this isn’t the end of the partnership: The next phase will focus on legislative action on wildfire coverage.
When AP engages in collaborations like these we become more than just a content provider to our customers; we’re helping them produce high-impact local coverage that wouldn’t exist otherwise. In this case, the “Destined to Burn” partnership was managed at every level by West Deputy Director of Newsgathering Anna Jo Bratton, who worked for six months with people throughout the AP and the collaborators to make the partnership a success.
For putting the AP at the center of an important collaboration, driving important journalism in a state ravaged by wildfires, and forging a stronger relationship with members, Williams, Kastanis and Bratton win this AP’s Best of the States.
Digging beyond standard coverage of the devastation that Cyclone Idai inflicted on Mozambique in mid-March, this all-formats team traveled into central Mozambique to produce an exclusive and affecting profile of a forensics investigator searching for bodies, counting the dead and giving remains a proper burial. https://bit.ly/2v9nqc7
for their work on Hurricane Michael. Holed-up in a collapsing hotel, dealing with a smashed vehicle and dodging downed trees to get to Mexico Beach for the first comprehensive, all-format look at a shredded town after Hurricane Michael. The video of the hotel awning collapse was a live exclusive for AP. The mainbar netted more than 600 source matches, and a sidebar added nearly 700 more. The top 10 AP images the next day were all from the storm, many from Mexico Beach. The photos, nearly all of them from Mexico Beach, ran on at least 75 front pages. One of our video pieces scored 72 channels with 273 hits and was unmatched by the competition. https://bit.ly/2yxKtinhttps://bit.ly/2S0gGYD
for exclusively showing how nearly $4 billion in federal funding for reinforced storm surge barriers after Hurricane Harvey is being used to prioritize protecting Gulf Coast enclaves packed with oil refineries, protecting the industry that has been blamed for exacerbating climate change. https://bit.ly/2P2ZShf
for uncovering that after Hurricane Maria damaged tens of thousands of homes in Puerto Rico, a newly created Florida company with an unproven track record won more than $30 million in government contracts for emergency tarps that were not delivered. http://bit.ly/2ihWBQg
While books and movies have shed light on the world of big-time amateur basketball, no one has published stories along the way – until now. With the first story in a series, Detroit sportswriter Larry Lage and others in a team from Sports established AP as the authority on news about Emoni Bates, a 13-year-old who stands at 6-foot-7, just started the eighth grade and is primed to be the biggest basketball prospect in the United States. The goal is to understand the high-pressure world of college basketball recruiting by following a single promising player’s path.
Lage, hybrid video journalist Mike Householder and photographer Paul Sancya of Detroit reported with the specific intent of presenting the stories in multiple ways, then worked with Chicago sports writer Jim Litke and east regional sports editor Oskar Garcia to craft the hub presentation of the text, photos, video and audio.
For their strong, revealing work, Lage, Householder, Sancya and Litke share this week’s Best of the States prize.
for reporting exclusively that an energy company had failed to notify county emergency officials of a massive methane leak in northeastern Pennsylvania. http://bit.ly/2yopugf
With African American and Hispanic communities in the Houston region already suffering higher rates of asthma and other diseases than the nation at large, AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer decided to focus on the area for a story on ordinary Americans living through the Trump administration’s public health and environmental rollbacks.
The administration was cutting back on rules limiting and monitoring harmful industrial pollutants, slashing enforcement and weakening an industrial-disaster rule.
Knickmeyer, a Washington-based environmental issues reporter, spent months searching out Houston residents, telling their stories along with deep reporting on the regulatory actions and their consequences.
Former EPA Director Gina McCarthy was among many retweeting the story, calling it a “must read” article.
For a rich, insightful look at the consequences of the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks on vulnerable communities, Knickmeyer wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for finding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency auctioned off disaster-response trailers at fire-sale prices, and then scrambled to find housing for Hurricane Harvey victims. http://bit.ly/2hfpNqo
It was a tide of humanity that just kept getting larger.
Driven from their homes by mass violence after a clash between insurgents and police, Rohingya Muslims from a borderland state in Buddhist-majority Myanmar streamed into neighboring Bangladesh where they faced homelessness, more potential violence and deeply uncertain futures.
Day after excruciating day, an AP team of journalists on both sides of the border painted a portrait of human misery and the hope that always lurks within it – and cast doubt on claims by Myanmar’s government that Rohingya villagers set fire to their own homes.
For their work to focus the world’s attention on the Rohingya’s exodus, Delhi staffers – photographer Bernat Armangue, correspondent Muneeza Naqvi and video journalist Al-emrun Garjon – and Myanmar correspondent Esther Htusan win this week’s Beat of the Week award.
Shootings in Chicago have captured national headlines, and for good reason: The city has among the highest rates of teenage gun violence in the nation. But where else in the U.S. are teenagers most likely to be killed or injured by gunfire? Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles?
In an exclusive analysis, journalists from the AP, working jointly with the USA Today Network, arrived at an unexpected answer: Except for Chicago, the places with the highest rates of teen gun violence in America are smaller and mid-sized cities – towns like Wilmington, Delaware, population 72,000.
AP data journalists Meghan Hoyer and Larry Fenn led the analysis of 3½ years’ worth of shooting cases provided by the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. Baltimore reporter Juliet Linderman, with significant assists from Albany reporter Michael Hill and Savannah correspondent Russ Bynum, picked it up from there. Video journalist Allen Breed produced a powerful video that illustrates the danger and despair, along with the difficulties that WIlmington is having in addressing the problems. The package also was enhanced with graphics from interactives producer Maureen Linke.
For their work revealing a surprising side of teenage gun violence in America, state reporters Linderman, Bynum and Hill, video journalist Breed, data journalists Hoyer and Fenn, and graphic artist Linke share this week’s Best of the States award.
for detailing the failure of storage tanks holding crude oil, gasoline and other contaminants during Hurricane Harvey. https://www.apnews.com/0485b3c424be4ce3bb555cf16a8...
for their illustrated explainer that looked at the many ways the trillions of gallons of water that Hurricane Harvey dumped on Texas will impact the region for years to come. https://www.apnews.com/fe0a07ce6fe94137a7e0a2e0cea...
for getting behind-the-scenes access to former Miami Hurricanes coach Butch Davis’ return to coaching at Florida International University after a seven-year hiatus. http://bit.ly/2xbt5Bx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP9Fs6EHlsY
The stories could not be more different. One revealed that United Nations peacekeepers had been accused of thousands of instances of sexual abuse over 12 years. The other recounted the last hours of a doomed freighter and its crew, as they sailed into a hurricane.
But both of these AP stories – by Paisley Dodds and Jason Dearen, respectively – drew extraordinary notice, captivating readers in a busy news week. And in a departure from usual practice, the two contrasting stories, a hard-hitting investigation and a powerful narrative, are being recognized as co-winners of the Beat of the Week.
When New Orleans staff photographer Gerald Herbert heard reports of a tornado touchdown 50 miles away, outside of New Orleans, he jumped into his truck and headed out of town to get a head start on coverage of the damage. Within minutes he changed direction when another twister touched down inside New Orleans itself.
Over the next few hours, Herbert was a one man journalism machine, filing to photos, video, text, radio and even securing dramatic UGC. Herbert wins this week’s $300 Best of the States award.
for extra effort after covering a Florida Panthers-Carolina Hurricanes hockey game; learning that the Florida team’s coach, Gerard Gallant, had been fired and that his former team had left without him, DeBlaker captured exclusive images of Gallant stepping into a cab.
http://qctimes.com/sports/hockey/professional/flor...
