Oct. 21, 2022

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reporter’s intimate story of yearslong journey to coming out

marked National Coming Out Day by telling the nuanced and sometimes excruciating story of his long journey to sharing his secret — and how he tried to come out to his deceased parents in an unusual way, with mixed results.New York-based Calvan surfaced his own memories, reporting on them and framing a story that was equal parts personal and professional, deftly balancing — as not all first-person stories do — the demands of journalism with the self-disclosure of memoir.His intimate story resonated with a digital audience that is attuned to experiential stories. It also served as an example of inclusive storytelling, centering a voice that might not otherwise be heard this way in the AP report.Read more

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April 24, 2020

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

The motorcycle diary: Photos of NYC in the pandemic era

found themselves in a city that had gone to ground. Faced with the challenge of photographing the absence of life in a city normally teeming with it, they took more than a dozen motorcycle trips through a New York virtually emptied by the virus, making raw, “drive-by” images. They recorded ghostly pedestrians, lone workers, eerie post-apocalyptic streetscapes and shrouds of fog. And while the virus is unseen, the threat of it appears in the eyes of the people still on the street.https://bit.ly/2Vz99nlhttps://bit.ly/3bxhKMIhttps://bit.ly/2S2pnmuhttps://bit.ly/3bBvfen

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Jan. 31, 2020

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: NFL’s Saints allegedly do damage control for Catholic Church on abuse crisis

New York-based federal law enforcement reporter Jim Mustian never gives up on a story.

Sticking with a case he began covering at another news organization in another state more than two years ago, Mustian landed a jaw-dropping exclusive for the AP: That a trove of hundreds of confidential emails has surfaced allegedly showing executives of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese amid its clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The story had an immediate, visceral impact with readers and earned praise from fellow journalists.

Mustian will continue to chip away at this story and, hopefully, reveal more about the Saints and their involvement with the church. But for now, Mustian’s sticktoitiveness and tough accountability reporting earns him this week’s Best of the States award.

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June 14, 2019

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

3 years after Prince’s death, first interview with his former protégé

for the first interview since Prince’s death with Apollonia Kotero, the Purple One’s former protégé and close friend. Kotero opened up about falling into depression after Prince’s death, and the superstar’s unfulfilled plans to re-launch her career – 30-plus years after she appeared in his “Purple Rain” film and became the lead singer of the group he formed, Apollonia 6. https://bit.ly/2ZkU7Aw

Oct. 19, 2016

Best of the States

Following Hoboken crash, AP team shows NJ Transit leads country in safety violations

After a New Jersey commuter train crashed into the Hoboken station, killing one woman and injuring more than 100 people, it became clear that there would be no quick answer to what caused the accident. But that didn’t stop East Social Media Editor Michael Sisak from wanting to know more about the deeper issues plaguing New Jersey Transit.

Sisak began diving into federal data and, working with New York-based freelancer Michael Balsamo and Newark reporter David Porter, discovered that the transit agency had paid more in fines for safety violations than any other commuter railroad in the country over the past five years. It also had a significantly higher accident rate than the rest of the nation’s 10 largest commuter railroads.

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