for reporting first that nearly half of Illinoisâ $16 billion in overdue bills had not been sent for processing, meaning the state could be on the hook for millions in late fees.http://trib.in/2zjvO9c
for breaking news that Minnesotaâs GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan had asked the party leadership to give her a 10 percent commission on major donations she lands for the party. http://trib.in/2DtvmM8
For years, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has made a name for himself as the tough-talking lawman from metro Phoenix who was unafraid of criticizing federal immigration enforcement, earning accolades not only from fellow conservatives but millions of dollars in donations from around the country.
Arizona law enforcement reporter Jacques Billeaud knew that much of Arpaio's campaign donations came from outside Arizona. Thatâs what his campaign had said. But exactly how much and from where was a mystery because the donations were catalogued in an unsearchable PDF format.
The down-at-the-heels industrial city of East Chicago, Indiana, made headlines around the world in August after the mayor ordered 1,000 people to get out of a 40-year-old public-housing complex because of lead contamination.
Many residents and observers expressed surprise: How could such a problem go overlooked for so many decades?
The Chicago bureauâs Sara Burnett and Jason Keyser teamed up for several weeks of intensive document and street reporting. What they found was as disturbing as the original news: The hazard shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone â because the housing complex had been built on the former site of a lead-products factory.
for documenting the high number of mass graves that the Islamic State group is responsible for, through interviews with witnesses, mass grave officials, NGOs and activists, and satellite photos. http://bit.ly/2clBkkZ http://trib.in/2cojfDv http://bit.ly/2cFTY6H
for an Asia-Mideast collaboration on the discovery of 39 Indians kidnapped and killed by the Islamic State group in Iraq. https://bit.ly/2GWV89R
While it is widely understood that U.S. public health departments have suffered budget cuts over the years, a collaborative AP/Kaiser Health News team used data and deep reporting to show exactly how expansive those cuts have been.
The investigation by APâs Michelle Smith, Meghan Hoyer and Mike Householder, teamed with KHNâs Lauren Weber, Laura Ungar, Hannah Recht and Anna Maria Barry-Jester, drew on data from disparate sources and interviews with more than 150 people to reveal a system starved of money and staff for years, and facing more cuts amid the worst health crisis in a century.
The teamâs all-formats package drew kudos and high-profile reaction from health officials, to the halls of Congress, to editorial pages.
For an ambitious story that laid bare the state of Americaâs public health system, the joint AP/KHN team of Smith, Hoyer, Householder, Weber, Ungar, Recht and Barry-Jester shares this weekâs Best of the States award.
hustled to get all-formats coverage of the arrest of powerful House Speaker Larry Householder, accused of orchestrating a $60 million bribery scheme.Amiri spent three hours on a blazing day in the sun with two dying cell phones, waiting for Householder to come out from his arraignment. As police arrived to clear the way for the car and disperse protesters, Amiriâs phone shut down, but luckily a few minutes of drama â including footage of Householder sitting in an SUV surrounded by furious protesters demanding he make a comment â were saved.With contributions from Amiriâs statewide colleagues, AP owned the story.https://bit.ly/3ga3vQghttps://bit.ly/2Erq58Z
Resolving cold cases can be thankless work for law enforcement â and an endless emotional journey for the families affected. Tamara Lush used the lens of one Florida cold case, and the relatives of a long-missing woman, to give life to the backlog of such cases nationwide.
After the publication of her first big takeout on an exhumation in a cold case, Lush turned her attention to two sisters who played just a small role in that piece. Lush met with the family numerous times â she was with them every step of the way through the drawn-out process of DNA tests, results, periods of silence from police, the day they finally got some answers about their missing family member, and the moment they shared that news with the woman's mother. The narrative story, teeming with emotion and details, can't be matched by any competitor.
For her Only on AP story that gave a face to the national backlog of cold cases, Lush wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
AP entertainment video manager Ryan Pearson had interviewed Chadwick Boseman eight times since 2013. He knew the actor and his work well, and heâd worked closely with the actorâs publicist and her company.
Thatâs why the publicistâs first media call after Bosemanâs death was to Pearson and the AP â she wanted the story reported by a responsible news organization. Another outlet, she worried, was getting close.
Pearson immediately alerted colleagues and set out to write an obituary that shocked the world. The AP staff in turn responded with comprehensive all-formats coverage, the story quickly becoming the biggest of the month on AP News and mobile.
For source and beat development that led to a tip on perhaps the biggest entertainment story of the year, and delivered a stream of important work for APâs customers and audience, Pearson wins APâs Best of the Week.
used source work to break news, naming the new chief for the U.S. Capitol Police three days ahead of the official announcement. They were so far out front that a local news station said even the new chief had not been officially told he had the job.The selection of a new head for the beleaguered department had been closely tracked by Washington national and local media in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection. But AP was well ahead of the competition, started with a sourceâs late-night tip to Justice Department reporter Tucker that J. Thomas Manger, former chief in Montgomery County, Maryland, was about to be named chief. Tucker shared that tip with Washington colleagues Michael Balsamo, Colleen Long and Mary Clare Jalonick, and the group flooded their sources, getting quiet acknowledgements. The following afternoon a second source confirmed the selection to Tucker, and the team â intimately familiar with the department and the search process â rounded out the story for Monday afternoonâs scoop.Their piece immediately received strong play and AP was cited by other news outlets that had been chasing the story. https://aplink.news/9wb
Earmarked for deportation, the immigrant children, some mere toddlers, were parked in nondescript hotels â out of sight and, the Trump administration thought, out of mind. But not out of reach of an Associated Press exclusive.
With an investigation based on source work, court records and witness accounts, immigration reporter Nomaan Merchant exposed how the Trump administration held children in hotels despite federal anti-trafficking laws and court rulings that mandate child-appropriate facilities.
Merchantâs exclusive sparked outrage and accusations of child abuse. Five days later, the Trump administration said it would not expel 17 people, including children, detained at one Texas hotel, and the hotels pledged to stop allowing the practice.
For his investigative story that punctured layers of secrecy and changed the fortunes of all-but-invisible immigrant children, Merchant wins APâs Best of the Week award.
In the wake of Hurricane Harvey hitting Texas in August, Emily Schmall in Fort Worth, Texas, and Michael Sisak in Philadelphia teamed up to report exclusively that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had sold off scores of trailers with little to no damage in the days leading up to the storm. Their reporting had an immediate impact: FEMA said it had halted the auctions and would evaluate whether any of the units could be used for Harvey victims.
Fast forward to November, when Sisak noticed the auctions had resumed. Working with Central Desk editor Jeff McMurray, Sisak and Schmall took a pointed look at government waste, showing how FEMA was selling gently used trailers for pennies on the dollar rather than making them available for disaster victims.
For resourceful reporting that broke new ground, Schmall and Sisak share this weekâs Best of the States prize.
As nurse practitioners, Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill played a pivotal role in the lives of many people in rural Holmes County, Mississippi, which with 44 percent of its residents living in poverty ranks as the seventh-poorest county in America, according to the Census Bureau.
So when the two Roman Catholic nuns were found stabbed to death in the home they shared, the news devastated friends and families, as well as the many people who came to rely on the pair for critical, life-saving medical care.
broke new ground on a competitive and fast-evolving national story: Amid accelerating efforts to pay reparations to Blacks and Indigenous Americans for injustices suffered over centuries, some of the most strident arguments for amends were coming from U.S. college campuses.Boston reporter Marcelo found that nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd sparked the latest national reckoning on racism, student and community activists from New England to the Deep South are demanding institutions take more ambitious steps to atone for past sins â from colonial-era slavery to more recent campus expansion projects that have pushed out entire communities of color.Marcelo anchored the project from Providence, Rhode Island, home to Brown University. The Ivy League school released an exhaustive historical report in 2006 and dedicated a slavery memorial in 2014, among continuing efforts to promote racial equity.Marceloâs reporting was powerfully illustrated with visuals from Boston video journalist Rodrique Ngowi, photographer Steven Senne, as well as work from photographers Jacquelyn Martin in Washington, John Bazemore in Atlanta and Steve Helber in Richmond, Virginia.https://aplink.news/bdxhttps://aplink.video/p00
delivered a rare and compelling multiformat account of what itâs like to experience a ransomware attack, telling the behind-the-scenes story of a 2019 Texas breach that was a harbinger of what has since exploded into a major national security threat.Reporters Bleiberg and Tucker broke news with their account of the attack on cities and towns by the same gang that two years later would target the worldâs largest meat processor. They reviewed thousands of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to nearly two dozen Texas communities and conducted exhaustive interviews with about 20 current and former officials, seeking to paint a picture of the precise moment government officials learned of the attack and exactly how they responded. They reported previously unknown details of the attacks, revealing that one city had to operate its water system manually and that an Air Force base endured disruptions in its access to a state database that facilitates background checks on visitors. Ransomware stories are difficult to tell visually, but video journalist Ellgren worked with colleagues to track down material for a widely seen video piece. The package received stellar play in Texas and beyond, with remarkable scores for reader engagement and pageviews.https://aplink.news/0bbhttps://aplink.video/653
The Koreatown area of Los Angeles can be a challenging place to report — many residents are hesitant to speak to the press. That makes what Los Angeles-based photographer Jae Hong pulled off that much more impressive.
Hong, a Korean American who moved to LA as a teenager, had recently spent a year on assignment in Tokyo. When he returned to the U.S., he was astonished by the increased aggression he saw toward Asian Americans, who were being blamed by some for COVID-19.
After much outreach and many conversations with the local Korean community, he found a few families willing to let him into their lives. The end result — Hongâs somber photos and poignant text — is a compelling portrait of a community experiencing very real fear amid attacks targeting Asians.
For timely, revealing enterprise reporting in both text and photos, Jae Hong wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
Who hasnât glanced out the car window and seen another driver, head down, texting furiously? That was the genesis of a story by Boston-based reporter Denise Lavoie, who took an authoritative nationwide look at the texting-while-driving scourge and law enforcementâs losing battle to stop it.
Lavoie did spot checks with a handful of states around the country, as well as interviews with federal transportation officials and others. Her reporting â APâs first major attempt to grasp the scope of the problem â found that police are fighting a losing battle despite adopting some pretty creative methods to catch serial texters in the act.
reported that thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the use of ârace-norming,â a practice the NFL has insisted on using in the leagueâs $1 billion brain injury settlement. Black NFL players delivered some 50,000 petitions to a federal court to end the practice.The algorithm used by the NFL assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice went unnoticed until 2018.Dale and Smith recognized that the story extends far beyond sports and money, to discrimination and racial injustice. Their deeply reported story quotes neurology experts who said the practice, sometimes used in medicine as a rough proxy for socioeconomic factors that can affect a personâs health, should not be used in the settlement because it has the effect of systematically discriminating against Black players. The story played widely; CBSN devoted eight minutes to the piece, calling it âa damning report.â https://aplink.news/rcp
When the World Conservation Congress came to Honolulu, Correspondent Caleb Jones did what any good AP reporter would. He sized up potential news and obtained releases early, including ones about the Great Elephant Census in Africa and a gorilla subspecies being classified as critically endangered.
But, while planning for an interview with Conservation International CEO Peter Seligman, Jones learned something that would take APâs coverage to another level â and take him to the bottom of the sea â while other reporters sat through speeches and presentations. Scientists with the conservation group and the University of Hawaii were about to embark on the first-ever submarine exploration of two ancient undersea volcanoes 3,000 feet beneath the Pacific and 100 miles off the coast of Hawaiiâs Big Island.
