Working the phones and social media, AP nailed an interview over Zoom with a 15-year-old who survived a charter bus rollover in New York that killed two adults and injured dozens of students on a trip to band camp.Read more
took what could have been a relatively mundane state wire brief about a vote on a local ordinance and transformed the story into an engaging all-formats national package with text, audio, photos and video that became the third most viewed story on AP News on the day of publication.Read more.
for reporting exclusively that a former Ethiopia Airlines chief engineer says the carrier delved into the maintenance records on a Boeing 737 Max jet a day after it crashed this year, part of what he says was a pattern of corruption that included fabricating records, signing off on shoddy repairs and even beating employees who got out of line. The jet’s crash in March killed all 157 people on board. https://bit.ly/2pupJqV
The New York video team, working with their counterparts at the BNC in Washington, provided live coverage of teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg's arrival to the United States, handily beating competitors with numerous live shots and edited pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGTj_3V8wQo
for a nuanced story of a community coming together to support their local newspaper, the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, in the year since a mass shooting killed five people at the paper. The paper’s surviving staff are recommitted to covering the community, using their craft to work through their trauma, while subscriptions have surged and random readers hug reporters on the job, Witte reported. https://bit.ly/2RPdkrw
for teaming up to score two exclusives related to Venezuela, breaking the news that secret talks were underway in Sweden, and that European countries were readying sanctions against the Maduro regime. The pair used their vast network of sources on both sides of the Atlantic to confirm vague rumors that diplomats from Russia, the U.N., Cuba and the EU were meeting in Sweden, a scoop that stunned even Swedish media. Two days later they followed up with the scoop on potential EU sanctions, including a preliminary list of Venezuelan officials that would be targeted.https://bit.ly/2Y0gV8khttps://bit.ly/2MV4l9j
for wrenching stories from survivors of sex abuse carried out by Boy Scout leaders. Changes in statute-of-limitation laws in various states have triggered a new wave of litigation against the Boy Scouts by men who said they were abused by unit leaders decades ago. What was missing from those stories were detailed accounts from abuse survivors – a gap filled by a powerful all-formats package that received tremendous play. https://bit.ly/2EU7ekq
for finding data from six automakers buried in a government website that allowed AP to earn a two-hour beat on a critical set of recalls involving 1.7 million Takata air bags. Krisher found the news after he acted on a tip. https://bit.ly/2TQGFlw
for their work that allowed AP to break news and dominate coverage with its rapid, all-format coverage of the shooting deaths of five people in Louisiana – including the first interview with a family member of the dead, Facebook postings from the shooter, and an all-formats interview with two people who lived with two of those killed. https://bit.ly/2BamasD
The short item that moved on the Associated Press’ New York state wire Saturday night about a two-car crash involving a limousine in the upstate town of Schoharie was hardly remarkable. It included the line: “State police said only that the crash happened just before 2 p.m. ... and caused “multiple fatalities.”
Then came the shocking update from the State Police the next morning: 20 people were killed in the crash, making it the deadliest traffic incident in the United States in more than a decade.
That triggered a coordinated multiformat response that leveraged the AP's resources in New York State and beyond, leading all coverage of the tragedy.
For outstanding breaking news work that lived up to the highest standards of the AP, Michael Hill, David Klepper, Hans Pennink, Bob Salsberg and Deepti Hajela win this week's Best of the States award.
for being first with a complete story on the tragic case of a mother of an MS-13 victim from Long Island who was struck and killed by an SUV as she was setting up a memorial on the very spot her daughter was killed two years earlier. https://bit.ly/2MQtIEe
for being first with the news that the Trump administration would extend temporary residency for nearly 7,000 Syrians in the U.S., but cut it off so new arrivals couldn’t apply. http://wapo.st/2EP02Vz
for his NewsBreak showing that Drake did not submit his latest album for Grammy consideration. http://bit.ly/2z51Vgw
for mining newly available information from a Russian-backed page deleted by Facebook to create a lively and informative data visualization showing divisive phrases used. http://bit.ly/2yteyRt
While books and movies have shed light on the world of big-time amateur basketball, no one has published stories along the way – until now. With the first story in a series, Detroit sportswriter Larry Lage and others in a team from Sports established AP as the authority on news about Emoni Bates, a 13-year-old who stands at 6-foot-7, just started the eighth grade and is primed to be the biggest basketball prospect in the United States. The goal is to understand the high-pressure world of college basketball recruiting by following a single promising player’s path.
Lage, hybrid video journalist Mike Householder and photographer Paul Sancya of Detroit reported with the specific intent of presenting the stories in multiple ways, then worked with Chicago sports writer Jim Litke and east regional sports editor Oskar Garcia to craft the hub presentation of the text, photos, video and audio.
For their strong, revealing work, Lage, Householder, Sancya and Litke share this week’s Best of the States prize.
A face transplant: It’s one of the rarest of surgeries, a medically complex, emotionally fraught procedure – and a challenge to cover as a truly revealing news story and not just a sensational headline.
That’s why AP National Writer Sharon Cohen’s narrative of the first face transplant performed at the renowned Mayo Clinic was so remarkable, combining detailed reporting on state-of-the-art medical science with a unique tragedy-to-triumph human story. The narrative, Andy’s New Face, which engaged readers and commanded front pages for days after its release, earns the Beat of the Week.
for breaking the news that a man promoted by President Donald Trump as an authority on voter fraud, and who was the source of a claim that 3 million illegal immigrants voted, was himself registered to vote in three states during the 2016 presidential election. http://apne.ws/2kNMmij
for quick reporting across continents on the death of the inventor of General Tso's Chicken, a 98-year-old chef who lived in Taiwan and hadn't spent time in New York in nearly three decades. http://bit.ly/2h3z1kI
for an exclusive story saying Maryland's prison system would change procedures for notifying victims about inmate deaths. http://bit.ly/2dn6DKa
for being first to report that the NBA was awarding its All-Star game to New Orleans ... http://nyti.ms/2biotPI