for dominant coverage of the eruption of the Anak Krakatau volcano just two days before Christmas, and the ensuing tsunami that hit Indonesia's Sunda Strait. AP was first to go live from the site – and stay exclusively live for a day – with the text story generating more than 200,000 page views in less than 24 hours. https://bit.ly/2s8lqQbhttps://bit.ly/2C39Zxs
for acting on a source’s tip to reveal the existence of a secret backchannel that the U.S. had opened up with socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello. The news was a shocking development in Venezuela’s grinding crisis and was bound to cause heartburn in Washington and Caracas because of Cabello’s alleged ties to drug trafficking — and allegations he ordered a hit on U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. Goodman took the off-the-record tip to senior Trump administration officials, who agreed to talk out of concern that the explosive scoop would make them look desperate.
The story dominated the week’s news cycle in Venezuela, and in a first for the AP’s aggressive coverage of the ongoing Venezuelan crisis, President Donald Trump confirmed the meetings from the White House, as did National Security Adviser John Bolton. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that he had authorized the contacts – even though the U.S. said Cabello and others were negotiating behind his back. The story received top billing in the Miami Herald and other news organizations scrambled to match the AP story.
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There’s a real difference between straight aerial photography and the bird’s-eye view that AP’s audience had of the destruction after a series of tornados touched down in western Ohio late on Memorial Day. Using a drone, Cincinnati photographer John Minchillo and video journalist Angie Wang provided those images from a rare perspective – both still photos and video – showing residents coping with the wreckage and sorting through their gutted homes.
The resulting video coverage was our overall top U.S. video story for the week, and Minchillo’s still photos were widely played, including front pages of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Two of his photos appeared in NBC’s The Week in Pictures.
From small details to sweeping landscapes of destruction, their dedication, teamwork and speed of delivery make John Minchillo and Angie Wang this week’s Best of the States winners.
for thoughtfully deploying resources to cover multiple pockets of protest across the capital after protesters supporting losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto clashed with police. The team used Iris Bambuser and LiveU to capture unmatched images of the chaos and shot from various angles to show the scene with tear gas filling the streets and helicopters dropping water to extinguish fires.https://bit.ly/2Mkondlhttps://bit.ly/2wgY4tv
The plot was bold: Fuel a military uprising in Venezuela by shifting the loyalty of key leaders, putting them in opposition to President Nicolas Maduro. But the plan to help the U.S.-backed opposition leader backfired at the moment of truth, prompting an understandable reaction from press to find out what went wrong.
While most other media speculated, AP Andean News Director Joshua Goodman used dogged reporting and years of source development to break the untold story of how the Obama and Trump administrations missed golden opportunities to woo two generals that the White House said were central to the plan.
The story garnered major play among customers and APNews users, and even earned the attention of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a driver of U.S. policy on Venezuela, who praised Goodman on Twitter.
For unearthing pivotal clues around a shadowy turn of international events, Goodman wins AP’s Best of the Week.
for a full week of compelling daily spot and enterprise coverage in all formats as migrants face diminished support and mounting obstacles, including detentions, on their trek through southern Mexico toward the United States.https://bit.ly/2LkZNIMhttps://bit.ly/2VLsv9s
for quickly getting to the scene of a collapsed building and capturing unmatched images of crews rescuing children. Oyekanmi held the live shot for nearly two hours, allowing AP to send live video as well as framegrabs to customers, while Alamba’s photos dominated websites and newspapers, including front-page placement on the next day’s New York Times print edition.https://bit.ly/2U2WUiThttps://bit.ly/2TSb6Mb
for their resolve and on-the-ground savvy, overcoming communications and access challenges to capture stunning images – stills and video – of the devastation following the crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet that killed all 157 people on board in Hejere, Ethiopia.https://bit.ly/2FifRVmhttps://bit.ly/2umvyFY
“How quickly can you and your boss get here?”
The curt text message to Andean News Director Joshua Goodman from Venezuela’s normally evasive communications minister promised a tantalizing scoop. It set Goodman and Ian Phillips, vice president for international news, on an intercontinental dash to Caracas to secure embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s first-ever interview with an English-language news agency.
Among the exclusives from the interview, Maduro revealed that his foreign minister had twice met secretly in New York with a Trump administration envoy. It came against a tense backdrop as the U.S. joined other Latin American nations in calling for the leader’s ouster.
The unprecedented access came as the result of Goodman’s years of source development with the Venezuelan government, including cultivating pro-government sources and making sure cabinet ministers saw that AP’s coverage of the nation was fair and balanced.
The package was a dominating all-formats beat for the AP and a massive draw for customers, with video of the interview downloaded more than 840 by clients around the world. And in a surprise first, Venezuelan state TV also carried the 42-minute interview in its entirety in prime time.
For his masterful source development, resourcefulness and quick work to put the AP ahead, Goodman wins AP’s Best of the Week award.
It doesn’t get much cooler than this.
Portland, Maine-based photographer Bob Bukaty’s captivating video and photos bring to life the 120-year-old tradition of ice harvesting, a process that yields ice used for cooling beverages at a New Hampshire summer resort. Using a variety of techniques, equipment, angles, reflections and vantage points, Bukaty took the readers onto the ice on Squam Lake in Holderness, N.H.
Concord correspondent Michael Casey originated the story and wrote the text, while East digital presentation editor Samantha Shotzbarger adapted Casey’s text story into an audio script, voiced by broadcast journalist Warren Levinson.
Bukaty spent most of a frigid day on the lake, using a GoPro camera in a waterproof housing to record the activity under and over the 13-inch-thick ice. He also recorded interviews of group members who used chain saws, ice picks and a massive sled-mounted saw to harvest the blocks of ice from the lake surface.
The striking visuals were the talk of newsrooms in New England and at New York headquarters. By week’s end the story had nearly 30,000 page views, and the video spent three days among AP’s top U.S. newsroom-ready videos – even while competing against State of the Union coverage.
For their story that generated national interest with compelling visuals, the team of Bukaty, Shotzbarger and Casey wins this week’s Best of the States.
for combining to deliver exclusive live video, photos and text from the scene immediately after a US-Bangla Airlines crash that killed 49 people. https://bit.ly/2u9oBLh
As soon as the ground stopped violently shaking in Anchorage on the morning of Nov. 30, Anchorage newsman Dan Joling calmed his nerves and started reporting. Then, within minutes, he went from producing urgents to plotting out with Stephanie Mullen, the West region’s deputy director of storytelling based in San Francisco, how AP would get the most compelling visuals at first light.
Already adept at capturing still photos, Joling would use a tool new to him, the live video streaming app Bambuser, to report on the damage from the two powerful back-to-back earthquakes centered just outside Alaska’s biggest city.
Out in the field, Joling drove up to a vehicle stranded on a crumpled roadway, first using his iPhone to snap photos that he quickly sent to a photo editor. He then fired up the Bambuser app, a tool that he had been trained on exactly one month before.
The live footage he streamed was scooped up immediately by customers in the United States and Europe.
His quick thinking and improvisation put the AP far ahead of the competition and gave viewers and customers unmatched views of the quakes’ aftermath, earning him AP’s Best of the Week honors.
for AP VoteCast, AP’s new survey of the American electorate that debuted in the midterm elections, offering powerful insight into the reasons behind voters’ choices, robustly illustrated with all-formats content generated via text and graphic automation. https://bit.ly/2K206nA
for an APNewsBreak that uncovered an effort promoted by Sen. Bob Corker to jumpstart political dialogue in deeply polarized Venezuela. Deep source reporting by Goodman revealed secret efforts by Corker’s office to bring a Harvard-trained conflict resolution expert to Caracas for closed-door workshops with representatives of Venezuela’s socialist government and the opposition. https://bit.ly/2OMGg5m
for the first and unmatched video footage of Zimbabwean troops opening fire on protesters and the general population during five hours of continuous coverage of post-election violence on the streets of Harare. https://bit.ly/2noOzE8https://bit.ly/2KGkSYkhttps://bit.ly/2vSOzQO
for racing to Nairobi’s Gikomba market early in the morning after getting a tip about a fire, and capturing the first video and first live shots of the disaster that killed 15 people and injured 15, well ahead of Reuters and other competitors. https://bit.ly/2MQwBoZ
for dominating international coverage of efforts to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach missing in a flooded Thai cave, providing unrivaled live footage, faster video edits, and illuminating text and photos over many days in grueling conditions. https://bit.ly/2tVtOnghttps://bit.ly/2lTO4RH
After Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire erupted June 3, sending a fast-moving flow of superheated ash, rock and debris into villages, AP staffers sprang into action. Over the next week, they worked around the clock in difficult and often-perilous conditions to produce all-formats dispatches from the scene and from shelters and funerals. They told the stories of people who had lost dozens of family members in the explosion, authorities’ search for survivors and victims, and relatives’ own return to homes buried up to the rooftops in ash to dig, in many cases with their own hands.
For scoring numerous exclusives that included highly detailed drone video of the disaster and spectacular photos and video, Guatemala-based journalist Sonia Perez, Mexico City-based reporter Mark Stevenson, Bogota camera operator Marko Alvarez, Guatemala photographer Moises Castillo, Peru-based senior photographer Rodrigo Abd, and stringer photographer Luis Soto have earned the Beat of the Week.
for obtaining the first published western interview of Natalia Veselnitskaya. The Russian lawyer, with reported links to the Kremlin, was at the center of a famous meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. She told AP she has not yet been called for questioning by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. https://bit.ly/2HYgQNR
for scoring several exclusives amid intense completion during the arrest of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. https://bit.ly/2qoMeev