Best of the States

AP finds colleges concerned as some students turn to counterfeit vaccine cards

It started with a tip.

When a college student mentioned that fellow unvaccinated students were getting fake COVID-19 vaccine cards in order to attend in-person classes, AP global investigations intern Roselyn Romero remembered that she'd seen an account on Instagram offering fake cards for $25 each.

Romero began searching social media platforms and talked to college students, faculty, administrators and health officials. What she found was a cottage industry offering to accommodate people who refuse to get vaccinated but need documentation saying that they’ve had the shots.

Her deeply reported story had nearly 250,000 pageviews on AP News and was used by hundreds of news outlets, including online and print front pages. She was also interviewed by NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by calling for a multiagency crackdown on the counterfeit cards.

For having a major national impact with her first AP byline, Roselyn Romero wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP identifies extortion by officials on Mexican side of Laredo border as cause of interruption in border appointments

AP learned from sources that U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped giving appointments for asylum through the CBP One mobile app in Laredo, Texas.Read more

Best of the States

Sourcing, records yield scoop: Texas AG helped donor fight Colorado lockout

When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he’d sent a letter leaning on Gunnison County, Colorado, to end an order expelling non-residents during the pandemic, AP’s Paul Weber immediately wondered: Why was the top law enforcement official in Texas picking a fight with a remote county two states away in the middle of the crisis? And did Paxton have donors there? 

Weber and colleague Jake Bleiberg started combing campaign finance and property records, quickly finding that some of Paxton’s biggest donors have homes in the wealthy mountain resort town of Crested Butte, Colorado. 

Persistent reporting and extensive public records work revealed that Paxton’s push against the Gunnison health order stood to benefit an exclusive group of Texans, including campaign donors who gave the attorney general a total of nearly $2 million. AP Texas members jumped on the story, using it in print and online.

For alertly connecting the dots between a puzzling press release and a conflict of interest in the attorney general's office, Weber and Bleiberg earn this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Armed jewelry thieves target Kardashian West in Paris

for being first to obtain key factual details of the Paris robbery targeting Kim Kardashian West, amid wild rumors circulating online. http://hrld.us/2dWx9dJ

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Agency Found NJ Transit Violations Before Crash

for being the first to report, in the wake of the Hoboken commuter crash, that New Jersey Transit trains had been involved in more than 150 accidents causing at least $4.8 million in damage since 2011 http://abcn.ws/2dVQXNl

Best of the States

Lead crisis in housing project was actually no surprise

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.

Best of the Week — First Winner

The first fully televised interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad

More than three years ago, Lebanon-Syria News Director Zeina Karam in Beirut began her quest to get an interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Karam, along with AP’s longtime Damascus stringer Albert Aji, worked their sources, convincing reluctant Syrian officials about The Associated Press’ reach and significance. Last week, their work paid off: the first fully televised interview Assad has given to an international news agency, resulting in an exclusive, news-breaking all-formats package.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Pro-painkiller echo chamber shaped policy amid drug epidemic

Combine the capabilities of The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity, and this is what you can get: A two-part blockbuster that exposed the efforts of the opioid industry and allied groups to stymie limits on the use of its powerful drugs, and detailed how they spent more than $880 million on lobbying and political contributions over the past decade.

The genesis of the project was a conversation between Tom Verdin, editor of AP’s state government team, and Geoff Mulvihill, a member of that team. Mulvihill, based in Mount Laurel, N.J., has covered the opioid crisis sweeping the nation, and the two hit upon the idea of trying to determine the extent of the pharmaceutical industry’s exerting influence in state legislatures across the country.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Report cites lax security at mental hospital

for reporting exclusively that corrections officials who investigated the April escape of two violent patients from Washington state's largest psychiatric hospital discovered a list of mistakes, blunders and deceptions at what should be a secure facility. http://apne.ws/2de0u60

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Emirates jet crashed as gear went up for 2nd landing attempt

for putting AP well ahead of competitors in reporting the findings of the first official report into last month's fiery crash landing of an Emirates airliner with 300 aboard. http://apne.ws/2cP8AP5

Best of the Week — First Winner

Hawaiian seafood caught by foreign crews confined on boats

AP’s Martha Mendoza, an investigative reporter based in Bangkok, and Margie Mason, medical writer in Jakarta, found that hundreds of undocumented men, many from impoverished Southeast Asian and Pacific nations, work in this U.S. fishing fleet. They have no visas and aren't protected by basic labor laws because of a loophole passed by Congress.

A story detailing the men’s plight, by Mendoza and Mason, resulted from a tip following their award-winning Seafood from Slaves investigation last year. It earns the Beat of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Yosemite adding 400 acres of meadow, forest

for source work that allowed him to break the news that Yosemite National Park had added 400 acres, its most significant expansion in nearly 70 years. http://bit.ly/2cuCJ9V

Best of the States

Police losing battle to get drivers to put down their phones

Who hasn’t glanced out the car window and seen another driver, head down, texting furiously? That was the genesis of a story by Boston-based reporter Denise Lavoie, who took an authoritative nationwide look at the texting-while-driving scourge and law enforcement’s losing battle to stop it.

Lavoie did spot checks with a handful of states around the country, as well as interviews with federal transportation officials and others. Her reporting – AP’s first major attempt to grasp the scope of the problem – found that police are fighting a losing battle despite adopting some pretty creative methods to catch serial texters in the act.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

As refugee children die, Nigeria probes theft of food aid

for exposing how government officials are being accused of diverting food aid from camps for people who fled Boko Haram extremists, leading to a high number of starving children.

http://bit.ly/2ccmvfH

http://apne.ws/2bzjfit

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

72 mass graves contain thousands massacred by Islamic State, AP finds

for documenting the high number of mass graves that the Islamic State group is responsible for, through interviews with witnesses, mass grave officials, NGOs and activists, and satellite photos. http://bit.ly/2clBkkZ http://trib.in/2cojfDv http://bit.ly/2cFTY6H

Best of the States

A distinctive retelling of a shocking tragedy

As nurse practitioners, Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill played a pivotal role in the lives of many people in rural Holmes County, Mississippi, which with 44 percent of its residents living in poverty ranks as the seventh-poorest county in America, according to the Census Bureau.

So when the two Roman Catholic nuns were found stabbed to death in the home they shared, the news devastated friends and families, as well as the many people who came to rely on the pair for critical, life-saving medical care.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Search for MH370 may be extended by Australia if funding can be found

for his interview with the new head of Australia’s Transport Safety Bureau, in which the official revealed that the team searching for the missing Malaysian airline is making plans for a new search. http://bit.ly/2bFlsqD

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Rio police: Scant evidence so far in Lochte robbery probe

for keeping AP ahead of developments in the fast-changing, highly-competitive Ryan Lochte story. Among the highlights were footage and photos of two of Lochte’s teammates being detained after they were removed from an airplane, and police officials expressing their doubts about Lochte’s account to the AP a day before calling it fabricated. Text: http://summergames.ap.org/article/2-lochte-teammat... Video: http://abcn.ws/2b0ZOua

Best of the Week — First Winner

A nightmare in South Sudan

The scene was nightmarish. Women and girls fleeing fighting in South Sudan had taken refuge in a United Nations camp. As fighting subsided, they ventured out in search of food, but just outside the camp, they were dragged off by soldiers and raped. Two died of their injuries. At least one attack was said to have occurred within sight of U.N. peacekeepers.

The details in Jason Patinkin’s only-on-AP story could not have been reported without getting into the camp – but the U.N. at first blocked journalists from entering. Demanding access along with other journalists – and winning – in the midst of already challenging coverage allowed Patinkin to produce an exclusive that prompted outrage around the world. It earns Beat of the Week.

Best of the Week — First Winner

As Olympics loom, violence flares in Rio's slums, even those termed ‘pacified’

Ahead of the Olympics, an AP team in Rio wanted a close look at the city's slums, which have long been plagued with violence, to learn whether high-profile community policing programs are working in areas deemed `pacified.' Braving gunfire in what is considered a no-go area for reporters, AP produced up-close, all-formats coverage showing deadly violence continues to flare.