for scoring AP’s latest scoop on the unfolding mystery in Cuba by being first to report a series of U.S. actions in retaliation for what are being called health “attacks" on U.S. diplomats. http://bit.ly/2xUd42P
for their all-formats AP investigation in Nairobi that revealed that in countries around the world, patients are being held hostage in hospitals even though they are well enough to go home – because they can’t pay their bills.https://bit.ly/2qaPrxJhttps://bit.ly/2P1p0cB
The disappearance and killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey has been one of the biggest, and most competitive, stories in the world this month, and the AP’s team in Turkey dominated coverage last week with its reporting surrounding a crime scene search of the consulate.
When crime scene investigators arrived at the consulate without notice on Oct. 15, Turkey news editor Ayse Wieting already had one camera fixed on the consulate door for 24-hour live coverage and quickly scrambled two more cameras with LiveU units. The AP beat the competition by more than two hours with the first edit of investigators entering the consulate.
On the text side, Ankara correspondent Suzan Fraser later got a high-level Turkish source to confirm that the consulate search turned up “evidence” that Khashoggi was killed there, a scoop that was cited across international and Turkish media.
And AP’s photo coverage of the story was also dominant, complementing the outstanding the video and text efforts. Photographers worked hard to find new angles on a visually challenging story, where often the only visible activity was people walking in and out of a building.
For impressive efforts and ingenuity in covering a worldwide top story of paramount importance to AP members and customers in all formats, the AP team earns Best of the Week honors.
for their analysis showing that brand-name prescription prices continue to rise and that the Trump Administration has not delivered on its promises to cut prescription drug price increases. https://bit.ly/2xCVi2M
The killing of black teenager Emmett Till remains one of the most notorious crimes in American history, unresolved more than 60 years later. The 14-year-old boy was lynched after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, a case that shocked the nation and helped inspire the civil rights movement. Alabama correspondent Jay Reeves has doggedly pursued any developments in the case over the years, and last week came away with a bombshell: the investigation was being reopened.
For that exclusive, Reeves wins the Beat of the Week.
for exclusively reporting that priceless Jewish artifacts, including ancient parchment Torahs from one of the world’s oldest synagogues, have gone missing amid the tumult of war. https://bit.ly/2Mg3YkC
for showing that a leading sustainable seafood distributor that claimed to track its fish to the very U.S. dock and even boat it came from was instead duping chefs and customers throughout the nation. https://bit.ly/2JSLNUs
for reporting that foreign companies working with Alibaba's online retail site were punished when they refused to sign exclusivity deals, a move which may be illegal in China. https://bit.ly/2Kxa9kq
for getting an interview with two scientists who worked in a Soviet Union secret chemical lab to produce the Novichok nerve agent that may have ended up in the attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. https://bit.ly/2HRj6Dp
for an AP investigation that found thousands more civilian deaths caused by the U.S.-led coalition in Mosul than earlier acknowledged. http://bit.ly/2phgQ3a
for one of the first published interviews that Warren Beatty has given in years on the occasion of his new Howard Hughes biopic, "The Rules Don't Apply."
http://bayareane.ws/2cFXsWA
for turning a spot story on YouTube’s removal of hundreds of thousands of videos from Syria into a wider look at how Syrian activists are scrambling to rescue their history. http://bit.ly/2xScoLJ
for a dozen vibrantly illustrated dispatches and a two-part series documenting the impact that a dramatic decline in sea ice has had on the environment, wildlife and people in the Arctic Circle’s Northwest Passage. https://www.apnews.com/tag/NewArctic
After the U.S. Supreme Court told states that juveniles who had been given mandatory life without parole sentences should get the chance to argue for their release, national writers Sharon Cohen and Adam Geller wanted to know how judges, prosecutors, lawmakers and parole boards were dealing with the inmates.
Aided by reporters in all 50 states, their exhaustive investigation showed for the first time that the high court’s mandate in 2016 to give inmates a chance at freedom is being applied inconsistently, varying from state to state, even county to county, “in a pattern that can make justice seem arbitrary.”
The resulting three-day series featured deeply reported text stories, an expansive photo report of inmates from across the country, a 16-minute audio extra, a video animation on teen brain development, a video story, and a searchable trove of state-by-state details – all hosted in a dynamic hub on APNews.com.
Cohen and Geller’s work wins this week’s Beat of the Week prize.
for exclusively reporting the latest updates in the military's investigation into the nude photo-sharing scandal at a rare visit to the base at Quantico. http://apne.ws/2q4aaUG
for her exclusive interview with Aretha Franklin, in which the Queen of Soul vented her frustrations with former friend Dionne Warwick. http://apne.ws/2q2D0G4
Baton Rouge-based reporter Michael Kunzelman was reporting on the police killing of a black man outside a convenience store last summer when a source called to encourage him to look into a case in front of a federal judge that had been mysteriously reassigned. It wasn’t the easiest time to be chasing down tips: the Alton Sterling shooting was swiftly followed by the killings of three law enforcement officials and then catastrophic flooding in Louisiana’s capital.
But Kunzelman didn’t forget about it.
When he was free, he began an investigation into the performance of U.S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi, work that would take months and aggressive use of public records. It culminated with the discovery last week she’d been ordered to seek treatment for alcoholism so severe that a colleague believed she couldn’t take care of herself. For his work Kunzelman wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for thoroughly reading an National Transportation Safety Board report on an Amtrak crash and avoiding the mistake other news outlets made in reporting the engineer involved had testing positive for morphine; in fact, he had received morphine at the hospital for pain from the crash. http://bit.ly/2jnP1TE
for being first with the final death toll in an Oakland warehouse fire, for using social media reporting to quickly tell the unusual story of the warehouse and its creator, and for drawing troubling parallels with a Rhode Island fire. http://bit.ly/2hjnIaH http://abcn.ws/2gxSGbm https://yhoo.it/2hu48H1 http://abcn.ws/2hqldE8
As soon as the flames were doused on an Oakland, California, warehouse known as the Ghost Ship two things were clear: The death toll would be huge, and telling the story would be complicated. It took a cross-format team effort to tell the story, and the staff in California rose to the occasion, including incoming San Francisco news editor Juliet Williams, who got an early start on her new job, dashing to the bureau from Sacramento to run the story.