Longtime cultivation of a source paid off with the AP getting exclusive access to an important new study that provided insight into how the federal justice system handles terrorism cases.Read more
A far-flung and well-coordinated team of AP journalists from California to Washington to Beijing came together to produce sharp, colorful and in-depth coverage of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping in San Francisco and the surrounding APEC summit that attracted world leaders, CEOs and abundant protesters. Read more
AP’s Global Entertainment team knew the game had changed when it came to the Grammys. They knew that the sense of the moment — in the moment — was going to win the day. And they were right.
Collaborating with Digital colleagues, the team delivered unprecedented audiences to APNews through two real-time vehicles: a hosted live video show streamed on YouTube and a multiformat Live Blog. It was a success in two spaces crucial to bringing in new audiences to AP, and the viewership on both reflects how AP can engage viewers on high-value entertainment events. For this major accomplishment that put AP ahead and in the spotlight on one of entertainment’s most important evenings, Global Entertainment’s Live Blog and Live Stream teams and their Digital colleagues are awarded Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP writer Gisela Salomon profiled immigrants who benefited from four previous major waves of immigration parole — Hungary in 1956, Vietnam in 1975, Cuba in 1980 and Venezuela in 2023 — to show how the U.S. policy has evolved over seven decades.Read more
In the runup to Super Tuesday, The Associated Press showed why it’s at the top of the class when it comes to elections coverage.
As Super Tuesday neared, the AP had an issue on its hands: how will it call races that night when it would have no VoteCast poll — but the TV networks had their exit polling, which could have put the AP at a competitive disadvantage? Serena Hawkins, data scientist for AP’s Decision Team, got to work.
In just two weeks, she researched, developed, tested and deployed a new approach to race calling that allowed the AP to declare Donald Trump and Joe Biden winners in several states with a very small return of counted votes.
That new model, used by the AP on Super Tuesday, put AP’s race calls ahead in states where the TV networks didn’t have a poll, and only a few minutes behind in states where they did — and with no errors in its calls.
Meanwhile, the AP, for the first time, was able to deliver its vote count directly to news consumers through a new immersive elections experience on APNews.
The effort was captained by development lead Linda Gorman, with team members Ryan Best, Michelle Minkoff Carlson, Chaithra Chandraiah, Shelly Cheng, Chad Day, Phil Holm, Dan Kempton, Humera Lodhi, Maya Sweedler, Pablo Barria Urenda and Robert Weston. On the night of Super Tuesday, the recirculation rate for these pages was, in a word, stratospheric.
For all these reasons, Serena Hawkins and the Elections Data Visualizations Team are Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP created an accountability story examining how President Joe Biden was doing on the goal of building a national network of electric vehicle charging stations.Read more
White House Correspondent Zeke Miller, Latin America Correspondent Joshua Goodman, Investigative Reporter Jim Mustian and Washington Reporter Lindsay Whitehurst combined forces to exclusively break the news that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift that could clear the way toward easing federal criminal penalties on pot at a time when President Joe Biden is seeking the support of younger voters.
The DEA’s biggest policy recommendation in its 50-year history had been highly anticipated and hotly contested by every major news organization. In the end, AP’s bombshell story last Tuesday left competitors scrambling to match AP’s reporting and give AP full credit for being first.
But AP wasn’t done. In the ensuing hours there was another APNewsAlert on Attorney General Merrick Garland endorsing the DEA proposal, a politics sidebar by Jonathan J. Cooper on how this is Biden’s latest attempt to reach out to younger voters and a “What It Means” glance by Jennifer Peltz and Whitehurst that unpacked the nuances of the order. That was also neatly presented in an AP video narrated by Whitehurst.
For strong, fast, exclusive reporting that put the AP out front to drive the conversation on a historic policy shift on pot, Miller, Goodman, Mustian and Whitehurst are Best of the Week — First Winner.
Strong source reporting and collaboration put AP’s White House team out front with the highly competitive news that President Joe Biden was holding up delivery of heavy bombs to Israel over concerns that it was preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah.Read more
