delivered a 24-hour text and video exclusive, reporting that 12-year-old Keedron Bryant had signed a record deal after his single, âI just Wanna Liveâ â written by his mother following George Floydâs death â went viral. https://bit.ly/3hUVQqh
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 regionâs 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 Alaskaâs 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 quakesâ aftermath, earning him APâs Best of the Week honors.
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
used determination and empathy to gain access to the world of Afghanistanâs hard-drug street addicts. The result is an unflinching but sensitive photo package that takes readers inside the addictsâ bleak lives. His images, raw, yet layered and nuanced â are at once intimate and riveting.Noroozi spent hours at locations in Kabul where the addicts gather â on a hillside and under a bridge. The addicts gradually accepted his presence and he was able to follow the grueling flow of their daily lives, apparent in his images. He also photographed am government raid, the Taliban allowing him access to their drug rehabilitation center where he wound up making striking images on multiple trips.Complementing the haunting photos, Norooziâs personal notes of his visits were so compelling they were fashioned into a first-person account, drawing readers directly into the experience.Read more
for a story pointing out that the New England Patriots would be one of the last NFL teams to start a black quarterback when Jacoby Brissett played on Sept. 22. http://bit.ly/2dkHQnL
for a deep records search and interviews on deadline that revealed how the discovery of the location of a Labrador dog named Lucy saved a man from a sex conviction. https://bit.ly/2Ohqnzn
When San Francisco-based data reporter Camille Fassett obtained a national dataset on police use of force, she and Washington-based law enforcement team leader Colleen Long pored over the numbers, looking for a new angle on the well-trod issue. Then investigative fellow Helen Wieffering hit on something â the data included numerous instances of force used against teens and kids.
Looking closer, what they found was stunning: 3,000 cases over 11 years where police used force against children, some as young as 6.
To put faces and voices to the numbers, the reporters spent months interviewing children, teens and parents. The team also secured police body camera footage that backed up the stories. The resulting package was a remarkable all-formats look at how Black and brown children are disproportionately affected by police force.For a deeply reported story that explores a little-recognized aspect of police use of force, the team of Fassett, Long and Wieffering is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
When WikiLeaks announced the release of hundreds of Saudi diplomatic documents last year, APâs Raphael Satter in Paris and Maggie Michael in Cairo provided some of the most aggressive coverage of the leak. They broke news about everything from the secretive kingdomâs checkbook diplomacy to unpaid limousine bills and cheating students.
But as they plowed through the documents, they also noticed medical and identity documents -- potentially serious privacy violations. Satter flagged the issue but never got a formal response from WikiLeaks; with other stories on the horizon and only a handful of questionable documents in hand, Satter and Michael shelved the subject.
reported exclusively on the launch of a federal investigation into the death last year of Ronald Greene, a Black man in Louisiana, following what state troopers say was a struggle at the end of a traffic chase. It is a long-simmering case in which police have refused to release any body camera video or records. Mustianâs deep reporting also included confirmation of a separate FBI civil rights investigation and the publication of graphic death photos. The probe has raised questions that the Louisiana State Police has so far refused to answer.https://bit.ly/33Zvf58https://bit.ly/33Z1yBd
The name âTuskegee, Alabamaâ evokes images of black empowerment in a once-segregated nation.
Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver became legends of education at what is now Tuskegee University, and the nationâs first black fighter pilots were known as the Tuskegee Airmen after training in the town during World War II. Michelle Obama gave an impassioned speech there in 2015 while first lady.
So why is there a Confederate monument in the middle of the nearly all-black city?
Birmingham, Ala., correspondent Jay Reeves, using information gleaned from old newspaper accounts, local government records and interviews, reported that the United Daughters of the Confederacy raised money for the monument in the early 1900s. And the white-controlled county gave the heritage group land at the center of town for a whites-only park. Itâs there that the statue still stands 109 years later.
Several efforts to relocate the monument have failed through the years, mainly because the Confederate heritage group still owns the land and refuses to move the statue.
In addition to text, Reeves shot photos and located archival images, as well as shooting and editing video for the multiformat package.
For digging in to examine why Confederate monuments are coming down nationwide but not in the historic, majority-black town of Tuskegee, Ala., Reeves wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
exclusively obtained body camera video kept secret for more than two years showing a Louisiana State Police trooper pummeling a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight, an attack the trooper defended as âpain compliance.âThe dramatic footage of the May 2019 beating of Aaron Larry Bowman â who could be heard wailing between blows, âIâm not resisting! Iâm not resistingâ â was featured with credit to AP on news broadcasts by all three major U.S. networks and in matcher stories by The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. APâs coverage also included exclusively obtained investigative documents on the case and an emotional all-formats interview with Bowman, conducted just a few weeks earlier, in which he recounted the beating that left him with a broken jaw, broken ribs, a broken wrist and a deep gash in his head.The piece by Mustian and Bleiberg shared a theme with several of the weekâs top AP stories: They shed light on issues fundamental to democracy that no one would have known about without the AP. This was just latest in a series of AP exclusives on the Louisiana State Police that began with stunning coverage of the deadly arrest of Ronald Greene by troopers from the same headquarters. Greeneâs arrest was kept under wraps before AP obtained video and published it earlier this year. Federal prosecutors are now examining both cases in a widening investigation into police brutality and potential cover-ups involving both troopers and state police brass.This weekâs story, accompanied by a video package from Stacey Plaisance and photographs by Rogelio Solis, saw strong play online with 225,000 pageviews on AP News and was APâs most-engaged story of the week with readers.https://aplink.news/tc9https://aplink.video/acm
were the first to piece together video, records and interviews for an in-depth, multiformat story outlining how a Black teen in Kansas ended up in foster care and died at a juvenile intake center after being restrained on his stomach for 40 minutes.AP had written previously about the death of Cedric âC.J.â Lofton, but Kansas City reporter Hollingsworth sensed a backstory waiting to be told. Her exhaustive reporting and Sheridanâs revealing video tell the story of a troubled youth and the disturbing confluence of events and decisions leading to his death.Read more
for discovering that nearly two-thirds of the building collapses in Mexico Cityâs devastating earthquake last month were caused by a risky building technique now forbidden in seismic hot spots elsewhere. http://bit.ly/2yyvIwS
As New York, Chicago, New Orleans and other cities with large black populations began to emerge as hot spots for COVID-19, reporters Aaron Morrison and Jay Reeves decided it would be relevant to examine how black Americans have historically mistrusted the medical field.
The pair connected the skepticism in the black community in part to the aftermath of the notorious âTuskegee Study,â in which roughly 600 poor black Alabama men were left untreated for syphilis to track the diseaseâs progress. The secret program was exposed in 1972 and ended, but its effects linger, well beyond Alabama.
With photography by Bebeto Matthews, the story received heavy play as the nation wrestled with the high rate of coronavirus infections among the black community.
For setting the AP apart with a timely examination of black Americansâ mistrust of the medical field, Morrison, Reeves and Matthews win this weekâs Best of the States award.
kept following a story much of the media has moved on from: what day-to-day life is like for American resident green-card holders who were left behind after the U.S. militaryâs chaotic exit from Afghanistan.The pairâs story, based on text messages, emails and phone conversations from those still in Afghanistan to loved ones and rescue groups, and directly with the AP, described a fearful, furtive existence of hiding in houses for weeks, keeping the lights off at night, moving from place to place, and donning baggy clothing and burqas to avoid detection by the Taliban if they absolutely must venture out.All say they were scared the Taliban would find them, throw them in jail, perhaps even kill them because they are Americans or had worked for the U.S. government. And they are concerned that the Biden administrationâs promised efforts to get them out have stalled.Investigative reporter Condon and San Diego-based journalist Watson had to walk a fine line, telling individualsâ stories without identifying details that would open them to potential retaliation. The ambitious story, accompanied by photos provided by one family of green card holders from California, was part of an important body of AP work over the past week that remained focused on Afghanistan in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. https://aplink.news/yt9
for their revealing story of the secret digital lives many kids are leading on social media that their parents know little or nothing about.https://bit.ly/2lUYYH5https://bit.ly/2MSYkW3
found that even as more states are promoting vote-by-mail during the coronavirus pandemic, the process is viewed skeptically by Black voters, one of the Democratic Partyâs most important voting groups, largely because of historical disenfranchisement and distrust of government institutions. Williams found voters in Detroit and Atlanta who said they would rather stand in line for hours â and potentially risk getting the virus â just so they can submit their ballot personally and be assured it will be counted. https://bit.ly/2DC7aYO
for their stunning all-formats package on life behind bars for women who were jailed because of opioid addiction. https://bit.ly/2J7ySOb
for his analysis of gifted programs in one of the nation's biggest and richest public school districts that shows the system mostly leaves out worthy blacks and Hispanics. http://abcn.ws/2E9iaMI
kept the AP in the forefront of 2020 census coverage, exploring the crucial undercount question for the first in-depth national story on the subject since demographic data was released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Aug. 12.By comparing the new numbers to earlier estimates, Schneider revealed a pattern in which the numbers consistently came in below what had been projected for both Hispanic and Black populations, suggesting that some areas were overlooked. The official numbers have implications for the distribution of federal funds and congressional representation.Phoenix-based Galvan uncovered Somerton, Arizona, a Latino community building new schools and taking other steps to accommodate its growing population â although the official census numbers showed 90 fewer people than a decade earlier. In a vivid example of show-donât-tell reporting, Galvan teamed up with Los Angeles photographer Jae Hong and videographer Eugene Garcia to convey the texture of the community, capturing voices of outrage and disbelief among local officials that their population numbers were so low.Schneider, meanwhile, worked with graphic artist Francois Duckett to put together national maps showing that the biggest shortfalls among Latino people came in the Southwest, while the count of Black individuals fared worst in the South. The highly visual presentation complemented the data, helping AP once again set the pace for national coverage of the 2020 headcount.https://aplink.news/mb2https://aplink.video/w10https://aplink.photos/k3o
