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.
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for being first with the news that the Obama administration would ease sanctions on Sudan, a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terror. http://apne.ws/2iKZOC8
for reporting that, despite a ban on using assets seized in criminal investigations to raise salaries for law enforcement, the federal government told the Virginia state government how to get around the rule. The resulting worker pay raises of up to 30 percent became the subject of a heated floor speech in the state Senate and a disapproving editorial. https://yhoo.it/2jRl90P
combined for a deeply reported, critical look at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomoâs handling of coronavirus outbreaks in his state, which has suffered the most nursing home deaths in the country. The AP story was followed the next day by Cuomo announcing major changes addressing concerns raised by APâs reporting.https://bit.ly/2WLPDmIhttps://bit.ly/2WYHU55
hustled to provide the first live images and other exclusive content from the scene of a double-stabbing outside the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.Cetinic, who has covered multiple extremist attacks in France, received an early tip from a friend near the attack scene, and knew to take the tip seriously even before the details became clear. He alerted colleagues and rushed to the site. The chief Paris police spokeswoman wasnât even aware of the stabbing until AP called to ask about it. In addition to his first live shot, filed by phone via the Bambuser app, Cetinic quickly found and interviewed a witness and obtained exclusive video and photos from another witness, including images of the weapon and the attack scene. Meanwhile, AP aggressively filed text as police hunted the attacker and carried out arrests, staying on top of sometimes contradictory information from authorities and other media.Cetinicâs fast action, and the quick response by the rest of APâs Paris staff, provided customers swift on-the-scene images that beat other major agencies and were widely used. https://bit.ly/3jib60Whttps://bit.ly/2SbZu3n
used their deep knowledge of the Supreme Court beat â and rigorous preparation â to put AP out front with a series of exclusives following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sherman and Gresko anticipated the inevitable after Ginsburg disclosed that she was being treated for another bout of cancer, and they were well positioned when the death was announced on Friday night. AP moved an alert within four minutes, with a story was out barely five minutes later, ahead of most other major outlets. Shermanâs elegant and deeply reported appreciation moved shortly after. He then set to work helping the White House and Congress teams with the very real question of what happens next.Gresko, meanwhile, teed off a series of exclusive pieces about Ginsburg â her final moments, the stories she told and how her style was something more than just a fashion statement. Sherman followed up with a look at whether eight justices would be enough should the 2020 election be contested. Play was stunning for their collective work â 5 million page views and 1,500 downloads.Sherman and Gresko understand not only the court and the complex legal filings, but also the justices themselves. And they value preparation as a precursor to speed. The pair works in tandem on different but equally interesting and important stories, and their collaboration kept the Washington bureau ahead of a momentous story in a year filled with momentous stories.https://bit.ly/3mQbKVChttps://bit.ly/2FXOqo7https://bit.ly/2FPTR8N
solved a central mystery of Pacific Gas & Electricâs intentional power shutoffs: why the utility was so prone to bungling the intentional blackouts.Following an earlier exclusive looking at PG&Eâs blackout response last fall, Pritchard received a tip: PG&E had revealed it did not require emergency management personnel to be trained in emergency management. The pandemic interrupted that reporting, but he and Liedtke revisited it just as blackout season returned to California this year. Their central finding was startling: Among the hundreds of people who handled the 2019 blackouts from PG&Eâs emergency operations center, only a handful had any training in Californiaâs Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS) â the playbook that California has used for a generation. In response to the reportersâ questions, PG&E revealed to AP that only âseveralâ emergency operations center workers or executives had any SEMS training, something not even the executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission knew.The story rippled through the San Francisco Bay Area media market and outward from there, receiving strong play in broadcast, online and in print. https://bit.ly/2FNzlFA
The allegations were explosive: A nurse at an immigration detention facility in rural Georgia said a gynecologist she called âthe uterus collectorâ performed mass hysterectomies without detaineesâ consent.
Reaction was fast and furious, but the AP treated the unsubstantiated allegations cautiously. Immigration reporter Nomaan Merchant dug into the story amid intense competition, reaching out to sources, doctors and a detainee who had surgery performed without her consent.
While his review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies, Merchant revealed a growing pattern of women not consenting to procedures that potentially jeopardized their ability to have children. Three days later, the AP was first to report that the doctor would no longer treat immigrant detainees.
For impressive work that broke new ground on a highly charged story, Merchant wins APâs Best of the Week award.
When Mexico announced in August that its 30 million students would start the school year using a combination of internet and television-based distance learning, many poor families chose to send their children to work to help survive the pandemicâs economic toll.
With tens of millions of out-of-school children worldwide, AP decided to look at this sad phenomenon on a broad level, from Latin America, where children hammered away inside amber mines or labored in brick kilns, to Kenya where girls had been forced into prostitution while others broke rocks in a quarry.
For their important and compelling work, the team of Maria Verza, Eduardo Verdugo, Alexis Triboulard, Carlos Valdez, Juan Karita, Carlos Guerrero, William Costa, Jorge Saenz, Tom Odula, Brian Inganga, Sheikh Saaliq and Dario Lopez wins APâs Best of the Week award.
resisted competitive pressure, holding off on a Department of Justice press release on an investigation into âdiscardedâ military ballots for President Donald Trump, instead taking the time to do a more deeply reported story.Most media rushed to publish when a U.S. attorney in the battleground state of Pennsylvania took the unusual step of announcing the ongoing investigation, saying nine mail-in ballots for the president had been âcast asideâ in a county elections office. The county manager later blamed the incident on confusion over the appearance of the envelopes, but conservative social media quickly seized on the initial announcement while the Trump campaign blamed Democrats for âtrying to steal the election.âThe original press release, however, was short on details and no one, federal or local, was talking. Pennsylvania news editor Christina Paciolla brought the story to the attention of APâs voting team, and a deeper examination began.The AP drew on expertise across the organization to produce a far more well-informed story the following day, providing essential context and new information, including the U.S. attorney defending his announcement of the votes for Trump, and that Attorney General William Barr had previously briefed the president on the case. https://bit.ly/3if2LJZ
used government air pollution data, academic studies and interviews to report exclusively that the western wildfires exposed at least 38 million people in five states to unhealthy levels of smoke, causing emergency room visits to spike and potentially thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm. The all-formats package included the experience of an Oregon woman whose smoke-triggered asthma attacks twice sent her to the emergency room.https://bit.ly/34hvDgShttps://bit.ly/3m6yeR0
produced a deep, well-sourced multimedia package showing how â with its disproportionate effect on the Black community â the coronavirus outbreak is forcing Black churches to change the way they mobilize voters during an election that many see as a tipping point.Every major election year, the voter mobilization in Black churches known as âsouls to the pollsâ is a cornerstone of get-out-the-vote efforts that can tip the outcome in close races. But to keep this bedrock tradition alive during the pandemic, Black church communities have had to adapt. New York-based race and ethnicity reporter Aaron Morrison led an AP team in a nationwide look at a this yearâs revamped souls-to-the-polls strategy. https://bit.ly/34iHcVhhttps://bit.ly/3jkE7bt
was the first to reach and get reaction from the head of the World Food Program following the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, putting AP ahead not only of other media, but the Nobel committee itself.The beat was possible thanks to Thomasâ quick reaction and the good relations the Rome video team has developed with Rome-based WFP. Thomas reached WFO Executive Director David Beasley through a longtime contact who was traveling with the director in Niger. Not only did Thomas get Beasley on the phone, she made sure he provided a video statement that AP expedited to clients. Thomas was also first to receive another clip from WFP in which Beasley, who was in Niger, celebrated the news with co-workers. A still frame was grabbed from the video, sharply handled by the London photo desk to keep AP ahead of other agencies in all formats on one of the top stories of the week. APâs urgent with Beasleyâs reaction to the peace prize moved an hour before major competitors, and video of him celebrating was five hours ahead of a primary competitor.Thomasâ scoop capped a week of excellent coverage by AP's Nobel Prize team, with fast filing of teh announcements across formats and aggressive efforts to locate and interview winners.https://bit.ly/3doVTcchttps://bit.ly/33ZR4Tz
Through 78 days at Walt Disney World, basketball writer Tim Reynolds proved himself virtually unstoppable, turning out game stories on deadline while also spinning insightful pieces that examined the major topics of 2020, from coronavirus concerns to racial injustice issues and the presidential election â not to mention the leagueâs work stoppage. The so-called bubble may have confined him to an arena in central Florida, but Reynoldsâ relentless NBA coverage reminded readers that sports illuminate our lives in ways big and small.
In all, Reynolds wrote an eye-popping 200-plus stories, collecting exclusives along the way. He capped his efforts with his insightful analysis of LeBron Jamesâ legacy after James led the Lakers to their record-tying 17th NBA title.
For his exhaustive, and exhausting, work that went well beyond the games in the NBA bubble, Reynolds wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
teamed up to provide the fastest, most complete coverage of the Trump administrationâs announcement that it would resettle no more than 15,000 refugees in 2021, another record low.Their work began days before the Sept. 30 deadline for a decision. Lee worked sources on his State Department beat, while Watson drew on her long experience covering refugees, speaking with advocates and with an Eritrean refugee in the U.S. whose dream of reuniting with his family became more remote as a result of Trumpâs decision. At 11:26 p.m. on the evening of the deadline, Lee received confirmation of the 15,000 cap from the State Department. Watson rushed it to wire, delivering a 700-word story by 12:04 a.m., including a quote of Trump vilifying refugees at a campaign rally that night in Minnesota. A major competitor moved its story at 2:37 a.m., and no one else had a story for hours. https://bit.ly/2Gr9NyA
When President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Barrett and her supporters clearly did not want to discuss the nomineeâs reported ties to a religious group called People of Praise.
Enter reporters Michelle Smith and Michael Biesecker. Using on-the-record interviews and an archive of deleted web pages, the pair documented Barrett's deep ties to the charismatic Christian group and painted a detailed picture of the organizationâs beliefs and practices from its early days to the present. And the reporters went on to reveal how the organization had systematically deleted all mentions of Barrett and her family from its website.
For deep, resourceful reporting that sheds new light on the current Supreme Court nominee on the cusp of her confirmation hearings, Smith and Biesecker share this weekâs Best of the States award.
went beyond just documenting the fires that swept across Brazilâs Pantanal wetlands, decimating wildlife, but also reported that the governmentâs meager response allowed the blazes to spiral out of control. Almost one-quarter of the Pantanal, the worldâs largest tropical wetlands, went up in flames â an area bigger than the state of Maryland, and double what California lost this year.
The Brazilian government said it mobilized hundreds of troops and agents. as well as aircraft dropping water, to douse the fires. The AP team used witness testimonials, local data and its journalistsâ own observations â they didnât find a single armed forces member during five days in the northern Pantanal, where the fires were centered. Sources yielded further evidence and a government source who was involved in the Pantanal fire response later confirmed the APâs findings, despite continued assertions by Brazilâs environment ministry that its response was stellar.
The team produced multiple packages with especially strong video and photos. The work was the most used from Latin America by AP clients for all of September.https://bit.ly/33zTrMvhttps://bit.ly/36KwSad
As stories with impact go, this one stands out: The lead subject of the piece, struggling to feed her family during the pandemic, was tracked down on social media and hired by a reader for a job.
The all-formats package by reporter Luis Andres Henao and visual journalist Jessie Wardarski chronicled the struggle of Sharawn Vinson and her Brooklyn family as they coped with a shortage of food and other crises, taking readers into the lives of a family that was forced to separate to keep everyone fed. The details shared by the family give readers a better understanding of the issues confronting many of the nationâs most vulnerable during the pandemic.
For a rare, intimate look at a family on the front lines of food insecurity brought on by the coronavirus, documented with riveting photos and video, Henao and Wardarski share this weekâs Best of the States award.
delivered an ambitious all-formats package led by a compelling character profile to unravel the mystery behind Indiaâs relatively low COVID-18 fatalities number, which experts say is an undercount. India has 5.4 million confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, but only 87,000 deaths. After numerous conversations with experts, health care officials and workers across the country, Ghosal and Saaliq offered a critical counternarrative, showing that India is not counting many deaths.
The story began with the personal narrative of Narayan Mitra, whose family said he wasnât counted as a coronavirus victim by doctors who said the virus was âincidentalâ since he had a pre-existing disease. The story also showed how Indian states were not complying with the Health Ministry guidelines to record all suspected virus deaths, including those who likely died of COVID-19 but werenât tested for it.https://bit.ly/2Ev4tZZ
targeted 10 states that have quickly rising coronavirus infections, finding that the crucial turnaround time to get results from a coronavirus test is exceeding federal guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline for results is less than two days.In the absence of federal data, Cassidyâs state-by-state reporting found typical turnaround times of three days from public labs, and longer lag times at commercial labs. Her story included a global perspective, noting the turn-around time is much faster in South Korea but much worse in some other countries, including South Africa. https://bit.ly/3ePogjw
