for a daylong stakeout of a U.S. base in Japan that yielded the only live video feed of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s plane returning from North Korea with three freed American prisoners.https://bit.ly/2rQfx9E
The Republican health care bill landed with projections that millions of people would lose their insurance coverage. Among the key questions: Who would be hurt most by the new plan?
AP data journalist Meghan Hoyer, based in Washington, set out to explore the impact of the GOP plan by gathering and analyzing data from several government and private entities. She found that Americans 55 and older who buy private health insurance will pay more than they do under Obamacare _and many of those who'd be hit hardest live in counties nationwide that gave President Donald Trump his strongest support.
Using those findings, reporters Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, searched for people — both Trump backers and Hillary Clinton supporters — to discuss how the plan would affect their finances. The work of these three reporters, blending careful data crunching and compelling shoe-leather reporting, earns the Beat of the Week.
News outlets had widely reported a drop in U.S. college enrollment, but nobody had really explained why. Education reporter Collin Binkley and Ohio-based video journalist Patrick Orsagos figured the best way to find out was to talk with young adults themselves.
Binkley won a grant from the Education Writers Association and traveled with Orsagos to western Tennessee, where the pair conducted cross-format interviews with high school graduates whose stories exposed the reasons behind the trend: The high cost of higher education. Fear of student debt. A hot job market. General disillusionment with education after high school experiences disrupted by the pandemic and school closures.
The story sparked wide discussion about the cost of college, the need for reform in higher education and the relevance of a bachelor’s degree in today’s economy. The day after publication the story landed on Reddit’s “popular” page, thanks to a post on the “Futurology” subreddit that received more than 25,000 upvotes and 3,000 comments. It appeared on at least 21 newspaper front pages, with good play on The Tennessean, The Jackson Sun, The Columbus Dispatch, The Roanoke Times and the Ithaca Journal, among others.
The story was tweeted by several members of Congress, including Sen. Marco Rubio. Parents, professors and other readers reached out via email and social media, saying the story resonated with them and demonstrated the need for America’s colleges to offer something young people see value in. And the former admissions director at Jackson State Community College offered to advise one of the students in the story on her college options; that student said she plans to contact him.
For going to the source to find the reasons behind a major trend, Binkley and Orsagos share this week’s Best of the Week — First Place honors.
delivered an all-formats package weaving together the personal, political and economic implications of a planned $20 billion Intel semiconductor manufacturing complex in rural Johnstown, Ohio, where homes are being demolished to make way for the project that will bring jobs to the “Silicon Heartland.”Knowing that customers look to the AP for this kind of business enterprise story, the journalists set out to illustrate the changing landscape around the project, literally and figuratively, as two Intel factories are expected to open in 2025 on the nearly 1,000-acre site. Framing the coverage, the team interviewed the extended family of 85-year-old Tressie Corsi at her longtime home, grounding the all-formats package in the lives of those most directly affected by the Intel project.Read more
were determined to capture for all formats the stories of evacuees from the the bombarded Mariupol steel plant, delivering the first extended account of life in the bunkers under the plant as war raged overhead.In Zaporizhzhia the team staked out a car park for days, poised for a “safe passage” operation evacuating civilians from the besieged plant. When the buses arrived, AP’s coverage included extensive live video, and the following day the journalists spent two hours with a woman and her family who described their life below ground — and the feeling of “visiting the sky” when they would dare emerge from the bunkers.Read more
teamed up to make AP first to report on how the pandemic exacerbated the spread of opioid addiction among Black Americans. Their story focused on St. Louis, bringing to light a new consequence of the coronavirus and racial injustice, major themes of the past year, showing that the pandemic accelerated a trend that was already in the works: The spread of opioid addiction from mostly rural, white communities to more urban, Black neighborhoods. The reporting placed this trend squarely in a history of drug addiction in America that has long discriminated against Black people, and described how even today, the best drug abuse treatment is more accessible to white people than to Black people. As one doctor put it, the soaring death rate from drug addiction has become a pressing civil rights issue. The story was sensitively told in text, photos and video, with poignant details, including one mother fearing her son’s overdose death for so long that she paid for his funeral in monthly installments. The care taken in telling this story was rewarded with AP’s second-highest reader engagement metrics of the day.https://aplink.news/ak7https://aplink.video/ce5https://aplink.photos/kgr
It’s a subject that has been largely ignored by the public and mainstream press in the U.S.: the plight of thousands of missing and murdered Native American women across the country.
Albuquerque reporter Mary Hudetz and national enterprise journalists Sharon Cohen and David Goldman teamed up to deliver an impressive all-formats package that illuminated these tragedies, engaging readers on one of the busiest news days in recent memory and earning praise from the industry.
For their efforts, Hudetz, Goldman and Cohen win this week’s Best of the States award.
for a story that revealed how former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s turn against President Trump wasn’t enough to convince blacks to let her return to the family fold. https://bit.ly/2MJbjwW
for detailing the confusion, chaos and fear inside the plane when a Southwest Airlines plane’s engine exploded, breaking a window and pulling one passenger halfway out the aircraft to her death. In other stories, they profiled the heroic pilot who landed the plane and broke news that the FAA would order inspections of engine fan blades like the one that caused the accident. https://bit.ly/2Kixp5z
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
for working sources outside the White House to nail down all major aspects of President Donald Trump's long-awaited tariff plan 45 minutes ahead of the pack. http://bit.ly/2tV3U5p
for their exclusive story that published the audio of the disturbing sound heard by American victims of the mysterious attacks in Havana. http://bit.ly/2wRAq5w
for striking images and stories of migrants from a two-week embed on a rescue ship operated by a Spanish volunteer group. http://nyti.ms/2c0ZZIF
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
for capturing the reunion of a Louisiana woman who last month was saved from floodwaters (along with her dog) and her rescuer. http://bit.ly/2cfnikj
for his report showing a growing backlash in the U.S. over the cost of providing life-saving drugs ... http://apne.ws/2d4shmp
for breaking the news that Iowa State University president Steven Leath had traveled more frequently than he claimed on the school’s planes and used them to take relatives and friends with him on trips, possibly in violation of ISU and state regulations. http://dmreg.co/2dtlWRj
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
for producing the first images and interviews with underage migrants being officially transferred from Calais' “jungle” camp to Britain. http://apne.ws/2eiOfCT
Having a rock star jump on the back of your motorcycle after you stopped to help him on the side of the road could be a lyric in a Bruce Springsteen song. But it really happened for a group of veterans in New Jersey _ and the AP was first to report the story that naturally went viral.
Late Saturday evening, New Jersey News Editor Josh Cornfield had wrapped up a weekend BNS shift when he got a tip that an American Legion post in Freehold, N.J., had posted a photo of one of their members with Springsteen. As it happened, a group from the legion had been out riding after a Veterans Day event when they noticed a stranded biker. Figuring “bikers gotta stick together,” they stopped to help.
Turns out, the stranded biker was The Boss.
