Best of the States

AP analysis: In the US, a centuries-old race war continues to rage against people of color

As AP race and ethnicity writer Aaron Morrison covered the protests that grew out of the 2020 killings of George Floyd and others, he also saw President Donald Trump on TV, trying to undermine the racial reckoning at every turn.

Fast forward to Jan. 6, when a mob of mostly white rioters, upset that Trump wasn't reelected, violently breached the U.S. Capitol. Morrison connected the dots of what he described as a war of white aggression. “A war rages on in America,” Morrison wrote in this analysis piece, “It started with slavery and never ended ...” 

With powerful video by Noreen Nasir, portraits by Chris Carlson and presentation by Alyssa Goodman, the package received prominent play and sparked discussion both online and within the AP.

For a timely, compelling package that looks at the state of race relations with historical context and thoughtful analysis, the team of Morrison, Nasir, Carlson and Goodman earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP exposes harmful gaps in early childhood intervention program

AP didn’t just expose gaps in a federally mandated early childhood intervention program, we also explored the heartbreaking cost with an intimate, all-formats examination of the tangible impact on children with developmental delays.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Grassland birds in peril, spurring efforts to save declining habitats

AP reported over several months how the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act has failed to prevent the decline of America’s grassland birds and their habitat.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

How fun road trip to Mexico became days of horror

teamed up on reporting from both sides of the border as AP took readers through the harrowing journey of a group of childhood friends on a fun trip to Mexico that ended up in kidnapping and death.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Proposal to hide import data would shield labor abuses

broke the story of a proposal backed by leading U.S. corporations to hide key import data — data vitally important to researchers and investigative journalists seeking to hold corporations accountable for the mistreatment of workers in their overseas supply chains. A tip from an industry source brought Goodman’s attention to a group of 20 major companies seeking to keep vessel manifests, and thus sourcing, confidential.AP published Goodman’s scoop as the corporate group pitched its proposal behind closed doors in Washington. The piece prompted an outcry from members of Congress and groups advocating for responsible sourcing and greater transparency in global supply chains.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

Lightning-fast coverage by eyewitness Goodman puts AP far ahead on Rushdie attack

Miami-based AP reporter Josh Goodman was in the audience at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York — enjoying his vacation — when a man rushed the stage and stabbed Salman Rushdie, the author who has lived under threat of death since 1989. In the critical moments that followed, Goodman cemented a huge competitive advantage for AP on one of the biggest global news stories of the week.

Amid chaos in the hall, Goodman shot smartphone images of people attending to Rushdie as he lay on the stage, then quickly sent photos and dictated details to AP. Some 20 minutes after the attack, AP had an alert and photos in the hands of members and customers.

Goodman continued reporting for all formats while colleagues from New York to Iran pitched in on the story. No news organization could catch up in those initial hours.

For extraordinary work across formats by an accomplished and experienced journalist who understood the needs of AP clients and how to handle breaking news when it erupted in front of him, Goodman earns AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exclusive AP data reveals popularity of US homeschooling

obtained data across the country to establish the continued popularity of homeschooling for American families — even as schools reopened and vaccines became widely available.Because the federal government does not have a current database of homeschooling numbers, Thompson built her own by reaching out to education departments in all 50 states for their data. She also interviewed families for their perspectives on homeschooling, and used her experience on the education beat to put the trend in the context of homeschooling regulation debates, concerns over neglected students and a broader decline of public school enrollment.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Release of 1950s census data developed into snapshot of US

saw the routine release of 72-year-old census data as an opportunity to deliver a textured portrait of 1950s America, reminding readers just how much the U.S. has changed.Schneider, AP’s primary census reporter, posted his story a day ahead of the data release, taking readers back to the first national count after World War II, the early years of the baby boom and a period when many American cities were hitting peak population levels. Schneider’s text was supplemented by a rich cross-section of images evoking a bygone era.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Liberal US cities change course, clearing homeless camps

Sara Cline documented how liberal cities from Seattle to Austin, Texas, to New York, are taking a far more aggressive approach in dealing with homelessness as they emerge from the pandemic.Cities that for years tolerated tent encampments in public parks and public spaces are responding to fed-up business owners and residents who say the levels of street disorder are too high. But people who work with the unhoused say newly elected mayors are targeting a vulnerable population to score political points, rather than dealing with the underlying issues of addiction and housing affordability.Cline, a Portland, Oregon-based Report For America AP fellow, worked with staff photographers Ted Warren in Seattle and Rich Pedroncelli in Sacramento, California, to document the increased camp sweeps and to highlight the issues of people living on the street. Her story was one of only two non-Ukraine stories in AP’s top 10 for reader engagement over the weekend. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Access yields engaging story of US couple rescuing Afghans

used remarkable access to chronicle an Afghan family settling into heartland America thanks to the efforts of a dedicated couple.San Diego-based reporter Watson had previously reported on Afghans fleeing to the U.S. She used farmer Caroline Clarin as a resource; Clarin worked as an agricultural adviser in Afghanistan and now works to rescue her Afghan contacts threatened by the Taliban. Meanwhile, enterprise photographer Goldman was looking for a newly immigrated family to follow. He connected with Watson and enterprise video journalist Breed, the trio traveling to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where, thanks to the trust Watson had built with Clarin, they had exceptional access to Clarin, her wife and the Patans, an Afghan family the couple “adopted” after paying to fly them to the U.S.The team captured intimate details of both families’ daily lives in all formats: the family gatherings, the Patan kids’ school days and life on the farm. Clarin and her wife talked about their worries — the expenses they were accruing to rescue Afghans, but more so, their fears for those still left behind. The text story also looked at the bureaucratic hurdles of getting families out of Afghanistan, and Breed gathered sound for an audio story, written by digital storyteller Shotzbarger, voiced by Watson. Shotzbarger also brought all the elements together in a compelling presentation.The package, running on the eve of Thanksgiving, resonated with readers. It records one woman’s dedication to the daunting task of bringing Afghans to the U.S., and the loving relationship built between a farm couple and a traditional Afghan family in rural Minnesota.https://aplink.news/o5thttps://aplink.photos/ukrhttps://aplink.video/fj6https://aplink.news/58c

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Poignant story of daughter’s caregiving for oldest WWII veteran

chronicled the struggle to care for Lawrence Brooks, who at 112 is now the oldest American World War II veteran.The story came about after Deep South correspondent Rebecca Santana received an email about a GoFundMe set up to help Brooks’ daughter care for him. Willingham’s sensitive and respectful reporting style helped establish a level of trust with Vanessa Brooks, who eventually felt comfortable telling her father’s story and she struggles to care for him. The result was a touching tribute to a daughter doing her best in cificult circumstances.Willingham is a corps member in Jackson, Mississippi, for the AP/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Her story, accompanied by Kathleen Flynn’s intimate photos of Brooks and his daughter at home, received strong online play and was featured prominently in The Atlanta Journal Constitution print edition. https://aplink.news/tjr

Best of the Week — First Winner

Across formats, across countries: AP dominates coverage of border migrant encampment

AP journalists in three countries had already dominated coverage of the thousands of mostly Haitian asylum seekers who converged on a U.S.-Mexico border encampment when AP had yet another scoop: Despite Biden administration rhetoric, many, if not most, of the migrants were staying at least temporarily in the U.S. under an increasingly chaotic U.S. asylum system.

What followed was another week of outstanding and indefatigable all-formats AP coverage and collaboration, with a steady stream of breaking news and distinctive enterprise, from spot developments at the border, to the Latin American roots of the Haitian surge, to deportees arriving in Haiti amid chaos and violence in a country they barely recognize.

All of it delivered with visuals that brought the stories to life and drove news cycles.

For sweeping, collaborative, win-each-day coverage that earned praise from customers and colleagues alike, this team of more than two dozen journalists, in collaboration across desks and formats, is AP’s Best of Week — First Winner.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Dual winners: Resourceful AP teams deliver smart, fast, exclusive coverage in Afghanistan, Haiti

From Afghanistan to Haiti, AP staffers and stringers on two sides of the world were challenged last week to cover fast-breaking news while keeping themselves and their families safe. They excelled at both; AP’s coverage of Afghanistan’s fall to Taliban insurgents and the deadly earthquake across Haiti share Best of the Week honors.

In Afghanistan, with events unfolding at a breakneck pace, AP journalists amid the turmoil on the ground were complemented by colleagues in several countries and time zones collaborating to confirm the news and get it out.

AP sent out 17 alerts on Sunday alone, as city after city surrendered to the Taliban. And AP was among the first — perhaps the outright first — to report that President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country and Taliban forces were entering the capital.

That same weekend, when a powerful magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck southwestern Haiti leaving hundreds dead, AP journalists on the island scrambled to get to the area within hours. Editors outside Haiti jumped in to help gather and verify content, and a second team arrived in-country within a day to reinforce the coverage. AP stood out in all formats, including first live video of the disaster and photos that landed on front pages.

For outstanding breaking news coverage under extreme circumstances, the AP team in Afghanistan with their international colleagues, and the AP team covering Haiti — Pierre Luxama, Evens Sanon, Joseph Odelyn, Mark Stevenson, Fernando Llano, Matías Delacroix, Marko Alvarez and Fernando González — are co-winners of AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

AP reveals a water crisis at the boiling point for Native Americans, farmers in Western river basin

AP Portland, Oregon, reporter Gillian Flaccus has long followed a simmering issue in the Klamath River Basin, a swath of rural agricultural land in Northern California and southern Oregon that is ground zero for the fight over an increasingly precious resource in the American West: water. Amid extreme drought in the region, the U.S. government has stopped irrigation to hundreds of farmers for the first time in history, while Native American tribes along the 257-mile Klamath River are watching fish species hover closer to extinction. The farmers face ruin and tribes worry their culture will vanish.Flaccus has developed deep sources with area farmers as well as tribal members and recently spent nearly a week in the remote area with freelance photographer Nathan Howard documenting an issue that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Working with New York photo editor and digital storyteller Alyssa Goodman, they produced a sweeping, striking all-formats package that showed the pain on both sides as people begin to realize the water may not be coming back. The package was among AP’s most-viewed stories for Friday. For immersive journalism that explores the human consequences of drought in the U.S. West, Flaccus, Howard and Goodman receive this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exclusive interview with Swiss banker in Venezuela corruption

spent months gaining the trust of Matthias Krull, a press-shy convicted felon, but the payoff was an exclusive story of how the Swiss banker facilitated the looting of Venezuela’s state coffers. Krull’s government testimony is credited with boosting multiple criminal investigations against corrupt allies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. During a series of off-the-record meetings over 10 months, Latin America correspondent Goodman developed a rapport with Krull, allaying concerns of the former banker and his attorney. Krull shared documents bolstering his claim that his former firm, driven by profits, ignored indications of money laundering by its clients. And at one point Krull allowed Miami-based video journalist Cody Jackson to record the removal of his court-ordered ankle monitor. The access and trust were key in helping Goodman stave off major competitors also chasing the interview.On a busy news day, Goodman’s story — just his latest exposing corruption in Venezuela — was the most-read on apnews.com, with remarkable reader engagement. Social media in Venezuela buzzed, while a leading Swiss website for financial news, competing against Goodman on this story, even put it atop their “Best of the Month” selections.https://bit.ly/3wAch2Khttps://bit.ly/3fRD7gD

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP analysis: Few standards for police use of ketamine

pulled back the curtain on ketamine injections, a technique used by police to subdue suspects that played a role in last year’s death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain after a police stop in suburban Denver. Nieberg talked to experts, reviewed medical studies and police policies, and analyzed cases where ketamine has been used. She found a lack of police training, conflicting medical standards and nonexistent protocols that have resulted in hospitalizations and deaths. https://bit.ly/3b3bjSf

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Neighbor churches, split on race lines, work to heal divide

for showing how a pair of Baptist churches in Georgia, one black and one white, have started trying to build a connection by confronting racism.

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.

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.

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.