Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Blight to light: Art project breathes life into empty buildings

Michael Hill, hybrid journalist, and Mike Groll, photographer, Albany, N.Y., for creatively using text, video, photos and even GIF to produce a challenging visual story: a public art project in a downtrodden upstate New York city that outfits windows of abandoned buildings with lights that rhythmically brighten and fade, giving the effect of slow breathing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/light-blig...

Best of the Week — First Winner

​All-formats team illuminates why a Democratic stronghold went for Trump

Last November, more than 200 counties across America, scores of them in the upper Midwest, turned from blue to red on the electoral map. Why did voters in once-Democratic strongholds support Donald Trump?

An all-formats AP team of Claire Galofaro, Martha Irvine, David Goldman and Angeliki Kastanis set out to find the answer by focusing on one rural Wisconsin county and getting into the lives and mindset of its people. The result was a revealing package that earns the Beat of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Getting it right on Amtrak crash investigation

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

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Nepali migrant's mournful homecoming tells the story for thousands

for an all-formats exploration of the thousands of deaths of Nepali migrant workers in recent years. http://apne.ws/2ikIxjP

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Accidental shooting deaths, injuries spike over the holidays

for an exclusive analysis of all gun violence cases over the past two years found that the holiday period between Christmas and New Year's Day is the deadliest for shootings that are accidental. http://apne.ws/2i1zHaN

Best of the Week — First Winner

Assassination of the Russian Ambassador

On his way home, AP photographer Burhan Ozbilici stopped at the opening of a photo exhibit at Ankara’s Contemporary Arts Center. The Russian ambassador to Turkey was to speak, and Ozbilici figured the AP could use images of the envoy for its archives.

Shockingly, Ozbilici instead found himself a witness to an assassination. With cool head and steady hands, he documented the killing of Ambassador Andrei Karlov, capturing some of the most astonishing images of this or any other year. His photo of the raging gunman _ one hand holding the gun, the other pointed to the ceiling, his lifeless victim on the floor _ would appear on countless front pages and broadcasts and websites. Within hours, it was seen by some 18 million people on Facebook alone.

Even in a year of remarkable work by AP staffers, Ozbilici’s photos and actions were extraordinary _ and richly deserving of the final Beat of the Week award of 2016.

Best of the States

Strong source work nets APNewsBreak in self-driving car showdown between Uber and Calif. officials

Los Angeles reporter Justin Pritchard has made the fledgling “autonomous vehicle” industry a sub-beat and has developed sourcing that has produced a number of significant beats for AP. When he heard Uber would begin picking up San Francisco passengers in its self-driving cars, he saw a confrontation brewing with California regulators and the opportunity for another scoop.

Uber had decided not to abide by a requirement to get a permit before starting its service in its hometown. Uber’s aggressive approach in San Francisco crashed a delicately crafted regulatory truce _ the 20 other companies testing prototypes on public roads applied for the permit before hitting the streets, and agreed to report crashes and other safety metrics.

The cars Uber was bringing to San Francisco seemed just the kind that would need a permit, but the leader of Uber’s self-driving program ­_ Anthony Levandowski _told Pritchard in an interview the day before the launch that they didn’t. He argued that because a person was behind the wheel to monitor the car, it was not advanced enough to need a permit.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Ransomed: The freeing of 226 Christians from Islamic State

What AP’s Lori Hinnant knew, from a conversation with Beirut bureau chief Zeina Karam early this year, amounted to a fascinating mystery: A series of Syrian villages had been emptied and many of their people taken hostage by the Islamic State group, but now most appeared to be free. It was clear that ransoms were paid, but no one would talk about how it happened.

The hostages were more than 200 Assyrian Christians who were rescued through a fundraising effort among the vanishing people’s global diaspora that brought in millions of dollars. These were the broad outlines of the story that Hinnant’s months of reporting confirmed, but even better were the exclusive details she unearthed _ including IS sending one villager with a ransom note to his bishop, the church dinners and concerts held around the world for donations, and the decision, fraught with ethical qualms and legal risks, to pay a ransom.

Hinnant’s resulting “thriller,” as one admirer called it, is the Beat of the Week.

Best of the States

Digging in for winter at Dakota Access pipeline protest

The Associated Press has aggressively covered the Dakota Access pipeline since even before construction began on the four-state pipeline to carry oil from North Dakota. The AP tracked the approval process and then was there every step of the way as the project spawned demonstrations from Native Americans and others who set up protest camps by the pipeline’s final piece near the Missouri River, saying construction would damage cultural artifacts and that a pipeline leak could pollute tribal water supplies. In the past few months, the AP has had coverage almost every day.

While Bismarck staffer James MacPherson had covered the story cross-format with the help of colleagues, a visually-focused enterprise project was in the works for December, bringing in staff from afar to provide video and photo elements of the largest camp to accompany a piece that was to explore the protest in the context of other issues being faced by Native Americans now and into the Trump administration. On Friday, Nov. 25, the news forced us to speed up our timeline for visuals as the Army Corps of Engineers gave a Dec. 5 deadline for protesters to get off the land.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Too quiet on the set: Filming accidents often go untold

The 2012 film “The Avengers” cemented Marvel’s dominance at the box office, but the movie had a secret: A man had died bringing the blockbuster to the big screen. John Suttles died after falling from his truck while preparing to drive it to a set, but his name was not listed in the film's credits. Outside the production and Suttles’ family, the only clue to his death and its connection to the movie was an 84-page investigative file by the workplace safety agency, Cal/OSHA.

That clue was uncovered by AP Entertainment Writer Anthony McCartney, who began investigating set accidents in 2014. After diving into state and federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration records, he discovered that dozens of workers had been killed and more had been seriously hurt on big-name television and film properties. Set accidents remain largely hidden, and the consequences usually amount to mere thousands of dollars in fines paid out of multimillion-dollar budgets, he reported. McCartney also catalogued numerous fatal film-set accidents internationally. His painstaking work wins Beat of the Week.

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)

Lack of choice in health care markets a growing problem

for crunching data and reporting exclusively that more than 1,000 counties in 26 states will have only a single health marketplace insurer next year. Their exhaustive data gathering helped generate more than a dozen state sidebars. http://nyti.ms/2fz9YJF

Best of the States

Lack of choice in health insurance markets a growing problem

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is one of the most divisive political issues in America. So when word began circulating last summer of potential double-digit premium hikes, Washington health care reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar knew he'd have a major story on his hands. With those price hikes would come renewed fears insurers would leave the program.

Looking ahead to the autumn release of the data, Alonso-Zaldivar and data journalism Meghan Hoyer starting laying the groundwork for AP to offer something distinctive, that no other news organization would have.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Divided America: Seeing options shrinking, white men ask why

As the bitter election season winds down, a recurring theme has been the conviction among many white men that they have been losing ground in society. National writer Matt Sedensky wanted to find a way to tell their story for a concluding installment in the series Divided America.

The yearlong assessment of America’s national disunity comprised more than two dozen deeply reported, multi-format stories exploring splits along racial, religious and socio-economic lines, as well as clashing attitudes on issues ranging from gun regulation to immigration.

Sedensky focused on the views of white men turning toward Republican nominee Donald Trump and rejecting Democrat Hillary Clinton. He listened to the voices on a call-in radio show in Texas _ both host and callers revealing their angst _ and then, through backgrounding interviews with them and reporting on research, showed why these men feel as they do.

Best of the States

Jailed without a Judge: AP reporter tells the story of woman jailed for months without due process

Reporter Jeff Amy in Jackson, Mississippi, often combs through recent federal court decisions, upcoming cases and random filings. Every once in a while that produces a whopper of a story. The story of Jessica Jauch, who was jailed for 96 days in Mississippi without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail, was the result of such legwork.

“Oh, my God,” he thought, as he pored over court documents that laid out, in great detail how Jauch was charged with a felony based on a secretly recorded video and how when she finally got a hearing and prosecutors watched the video _ in which she committed no crime _ the case fell apart.

Best of the Week — First Winner

An accidental shooting kills a child every other day

The tragic stories pop up frequently in local media: a curious toddler gets hold of a gun and accidentally shoots himself or someone else. But how often does that happen? Under what circumstances? And what children are most at risk?

In a new investigative partnership, a team of reporters from the AP and USA TODAY Network spent six months seeking answers to those questions and others about accidental shootings involving minors. What they discovered is horrifying: A child dies every other day of an accidental shooting in the United States. What's more, the federal government significantly undercounts the problem.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Auto reporter uncovers government accusations against American air bag maker

for uncovering the government's mounting complaints against ARC Automotive Inc. He discovered the scoop while digging through routine filings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; they detailed the company's stonewalling and refusal to cooperate with a U.S. investigation into a fatal air bag death that could affect 8 million other cars. http://apne.ws/2en0EIO

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)

American Unity and Children of Sept 11.

for two engaging pieces on the 9/11 anniversary. The first, built around video interviews with regular Americans, examined how the sense of national unity that existed after the attacks has disappeared; the other, in vignette style, focused on children who lost parents during the attacks. http://bit.ly/2cavGzY http://bit.ly/2cqA8YE http://apne.ws/2cmLRKi

Best of the States

Historic flooding in Louisiana

Many media were slow to respond to the historic flooding in Louisiana this month, but not The Associated Press. AP journalists provided timely, perceptive and poignant spot and enterprise stories from the very first hours of the torrential rains.

Aggressive cross-format coverage by a staff focused on stories of real people were key to covering the disaster. In text, the reporters included New Orleans administrative correspondent Rebecca Santana; Baton Rouge correspondent Melinda Deslatte; and newsmen Mike Kunzelman in Baton Rouge and Kevin McGill in New Orleans. Freelance photographer Max Becherer and video journalists John Mone of Houston, and Josh Replogle of Miami rounded out AP's team on the ground.