Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

International team examines trade in saltwater aquarium fish

produced a unique two-part series about how and why aquarium fish are captured and transported around the world. Like many good stories, this package had multiple layers, some of them dark.AP’s team in Indonesia went on a dive with a fisherman and visited breeding operations in Bali, and met with middlemen at a warehouse in Jakarta. They reported how fish are illegally caught using cyanide; it weakens the fish but also kills many while destroying the reefs they inhabit.In the U.S., the team spent months persuading U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials to agree to an on-camera interview. The journalists faced similar issues getting pet stores and enthusiasts to talk about such a sensitive topic. The second story, about captive breeding, presented its own challenges, mainly because the tricks and techniques of captive breeding are such closely held secrets.After months of newsgathering and editing by AP journalists, the team had it all, delivering a deeply reported package stocked with vivid photos and video.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

China grants preliminary approval to 38 new Trump trademarks

for landing the scoop that China had granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, paving the way for the president’s family to potentially develop a host of branded businesses in the country. http://apne.ws/2mxjueE

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

‘Cartels are scrambling’ as virus disrupts drug trade

revealed how the coronavirus is taking a bite out of the global drug trafficking – everything from severing key supply chains for Chinese precursor drugs to paralyzing the economies upon which drug sales rely. With detailed, on-the-record source work, they reported why drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia are being disrupted and how that is playing out in cities across the U.S., mostly in the form of tight supplies and prices that have risen to crisis-gouging levels. https://bit.ly/355KtWz

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

China grants Trump a valuable trademark, raising questions

for two scoops on Trump trademarks: The first showed how Trump’s 10-year fight to win back rights to his name in China ended in a sudden, surprise victory after he declared his candidacy. The second broke the news that China had officially registered the valuable new trademark in Trump’s name, prompting constitutional questions by some in the U.S. http://apne.ws/2lqqexG http://apne.ws/2lhzxRj

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Trump's trade war delays Chinese investment in Arkansas town, boosts wildfire rebuilding costs

Calif., for showing how President Trump’s trade war affected local communities, delaying plans for a paper mill in Arkansas and landing California wildfire victims with higher rebuilding costs. http://bit.ly/2nyYIhK https://bit.ly/2Mihc4Q

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Putting people before politics in Brexit trade coverage

delivered a unique story on the people directly affected by the high-stakes trade talks reaching a crescendo in Brussels. While competitive news organizations focused on the post-Brexit political wrangling, AP took an exclusive look at struggling French fishing crews and overwhelmed British truck drivers stuck in traffic jams at the English Channel. Thanks to years of source building in the region, the journalists were able to identify subjects that provided strong visuals, capturing the attention of AP clients and the public.https://bit.ly/382rj5Ghttps://bit.ly/3gQud1Fhttps://bit.ly/387pGnn

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP first with news of Harvey aid request, border wall trade-off

for breaking the news about a proposed House bill that would cut disaster relief money to help finance President Trump's border wall, and being first to report the amount of money Trump would request for Harvey aid. http://ti.me/2gNUbaZ

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reveals efforts to bring IS to justice for slave trade

spotlighted efforts by international investigators to bring the Islamic State to justice for the slavery and sex trafficking of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority. The story, which took nearly a year, built on investigators’ documents and El Deeb’s reporting in Iraq and Syria to track down former slaves, owners and those who witnessed the enslavement, all complemented by powerful photos and video of women who had been trafficked.https://bit.ly/2TN6bu9https://bit.ly/2X9imUg

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

In time for Super Bowl, AP explores uneasy Mexican avocado trade

Mexico City reporter Mark Stevenson took advantage of a temporary U.S. ban on Mexican avocado imports to explain, to an international audience of guacamole-crazed readers, the social strife, environmental impact and political forces at play in Mexico's avocado industry.Stevenson’s flurry of five stories started on Super Bowl Sunday with a piece about Mexico acknowledging that a U.S. plant safety inspector had been threatened in Mexico, prompting the U.S. ban. The piece ended up being the top-performing story on AP News, exceeding even the Super Bowl. And over the course of the week he went on to report extensively on factors surrounding the ban and Mexico’s avocado industry more broadly.Stevenson had plenty of context for his stories: At the end of the January he was part of an all-formats team that explored the intersection of avocados, deforestation and organized crime in Michoacan state. 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 States

Only on AP: Big farms find easy ways around caps on tariff aid

An AP Best of States mention in February about the hundreds of companies avoiding President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs raised questions about Trump’s $12 billion aid package to farmers hurt by the tariffs. What happened next shows how states can produce sharp, data-driven journalism – simply by calling on the data team for help.

AP filed Freedom of Information Act requests for U.S. Department of Agriculture data that was analyzed by Balint Szalai, a Hungarian investigative reporter embedded with AP’s data team, and Washington data team intern Riin Aljas.

Among their findings: Many big farming operations were legally collecting far more than the supposed caps on aid.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis reporter Steve Karnowski spoke to longtime USDA critics and interviewed farmers who defended taking the big checks, saying they didn’t even cover their losses under Trump’s trade war.

The Only-on-AP story ran on dozens of sites, and because the data and analysis were released to AP members in advance, many chose to localize their stories.

For sophisticated data analysis and on-the-ground reporting that shed light on a key consequences of trade policy, Karnowski, Szalai and Aljas share this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Working the phones from Korea for an exclusive with Dwayne Wade

for producing an Only on AP interview with Dwayne Wade while working at the Olympics in South Korea. Reynolds snagged Wade for an exclusive phone interview about his being traded to the Miami Heat shortly after learning of the impending trade at 3 a.m. Korea time. http://bit.ly/2C0jVum

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP sports writers score big scoops on NBA free agent deals

Jon Krawczynski and Tim Reynolds, for keeping AP out front during NBA free agency, combining for 28 bylines on trades deals, including news that Blake Griffin would stay with the Los Angeles Clippers on a $175 million five-year contract.

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/ap-sources-...

http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/sports/ap-sou...

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Anti-outsourcing senator's family business uses Mexican labor

One of the most vulnerable senators up for re-election in 2018 – Democrat Joe Donnelly of Indiana - has staked his nearly two-decade political career on opposition to outsourcing and free-trade agreements that ship American jobs abroad.

Following up on a tip from Washington, D.C., colleague Erica Werner, Indiana Statehouse reporter Brian Slodysko pulled together public documents and customs records to reveal that Donnelly has benefited financially from the very free trade policies he has decried since his first run for Congress. As Slodysko reported in his “Only on AP” story, Donnelly earned thousands of dollars in 2016 alone from stock in the arts and crafts business his family has owned for generations, which ships raw materials to its Mexican factory that produces ink pads and other supplies.

For shining light on something a politician would have preferred left unknown to his constituents, Slodysko wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reveals congressman chasing profits during pandemic

investigated the stock trading of U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, adding the New Jersey Democrat to the members of Congress who have come under scrutiny for their trades during the COVID-19 era. Detailing an extensive trading history that one former ethics official described as mind-boggling, Washington reporter Slodysko peeled back the curtain on the congressman’s trading activity and his failure to disclose it to the public.Getting the story wasn’t easy. To report it, Slodysko used software to harvest data from a list of trades released by Malinowski’s office. That enabled him to analyze just how active Malinowski had been in the stock market since the pandemic hit. Combining that with other stock price data, Slodysko was able to state that Malinowski — who early in the pandemic had admonished those looking to capitalize on the health crisis — bought or sold as much as $1 million of stock in medical and tech companies that had a stake in the virus response.AP’s story broke new ground in an important area of accountability reporting in Washington, and was quickly picked up by other outlets, including The Washington Post, Politico and The Hill, among others. https://aplink.news/yq7

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: US Catholic Church lobbies, gets windfall in federal PPP funds

Based on a tip following AP’s previous reporting on the Paycheck Protection Program, AP anticipated that the Roman Catholic Church might be one of the program’s biggest winners. 

Investigative reporters Reese Dunklin and Michael Rezendes started digging, first showing how the church had successfully lobbied for special treatment under the program, then, when the federal data dropped, the full extent of the church’s windfall. An analysis on deadline revealed $1.4 billion to $3.5 billion in forgivable loans, with many millions going to dioceses that paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy because of sexual abuse claims.

The story had an immediate impact with strong play and engagement in digital, print and broadcast outlets.

For being both first and authoritative on this highly competitive story, and for holding a remarkably powerful institution accountable, Dunklin and Rezendes share this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reporter locates plundered antiquities in Israeli museum

revealed that weeks after an American billionaire agreed to forfeit $70 million in looted antiquities to U.S. authorities, three of the items were still on display in Israel’s national museum.The AP was the only outlet to follow up on the Manhattan district attorney’s recent deal with Michael Steinhardt, a New York-based art collector and philanthropist with deep ties to Israel. Ben Zion found that the Israel Museum was home to several of the items seized, including a 2,200-year-old Greek text carved into limestone, with Steinhardt listed as the donor who provided them. The Jerusalem-based reporter also located a 2,800-year-old inscription on black volcanic stone, a Steinhardt-owned artifact of uncertain provenance that wasn’t included in the deal.Ben Zion, who has reported extensively on antiquities in Israel, tapped contacts inside the museum, the antiquities trade and the academic community to pin down the story. Neither Steinhardt nor the museum appear to have wanted the subject made public. They gave only brief prepared statements after repeated prodding.AP’s story comes as museums are facing greater scrutiny over the chain of ownership of their art, particularly work looted from conflict zones or illegally plundered from archaeological sites. There are growing calls for such items to be returned to their countries of origin.https://aplink.news/rau

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

50 years after the US declared war on drugs, AP examines racial disparities

used data and on-the-ground reporting to explore the fallout of America’s war on drugs, launched 50 years ago this summer by President Richard Nixon.Race and ethnicity reporter Morrison, joined by data journalist Kastanis and multiformat journalist Breed, set out to tell a story of the toll that harsh prison sentences and lifetime restrictions post-release have taken on Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities.To do so, the AP reviewed federal and state data, finding that the Black incarceration rate in America surged from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 in 2000, and the rate for the Latino population grew from 208 per 100,000 people to 615, while the white incarceration rate grew at a more modest rate, from 103 per100,000 people to 242.But beyond the data, the AP trio put names and a face to those caught up in this grinding war with no clear winners but many losers. The story’s lead subject, Alton Lucas, could have had a life of touring nationally and internationally with his DJ friend, but instead discovered drugs and the drug trade at the height of the war on drugs. As a crack cocaine addict involved in trafficking, the North Carolina man faced decades in prison at a time when the drug abuse and violence plaguing Black communities were not seen as the public health issue that opioids are today. The combination of Morrison’s deep reporting, Breed’s photos and video, and Kastanis’ data analysis, accompanied by graphics, resulted in a newsy, nuanced package, rich with historical context.https://aplink.news/k6jhttps://aplink.video/017

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Only on AP: Mexico cartel extermination site yields haunting clues

built trust with investigators, gaining exclusive all-formats access to a gruesome cartel “extermination site” in northern Mexico where a forensics team searches for the remains of some of Mexico’s nearly 100,000 missing people. After six months of work at the site in Nuevo Laredo, investigators still can’t offer an estimate of how many people disappeared there. Countless bone fragments were spread across 75,000 square feet of desert scrubland, and in a single room of a ruined house, the compacted, burnt human remains and debris were nearly 2 feet deep. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP hours ahead on long-awaited immigration asylum decision

broke the news hours ahead of the competition that the Biden administration would end the asylum limits at the U.S.-Mexico border that were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19.For more than a year, the administration faced growing questions — and pressure — over when it would end a Trump-era rule that has resulted in migrants being expelled at the border without a chance to seek humanitarian protection.The clean beat was the product of years of source development and seamless leveraging of reporting from the White House, the investigative team and the immigration team. The spot news break was bracketed by a series of smart stories showcasing AP’s depth of expertise on immigration matters.Read more