for illustrating the largely underreported problem of discarded needles from the opioid crisis turning up in rivers, on beaches and in public parks across the country. http://bit.ly/2v5VKqX
for reversing the prism to report, in the most candid terms, the internal struggles of Catholic clergy who have lost faith in their leadership and suffer from PTSD. With deeply empathetic coverage, they revealed that some priests are mindful about walking through a park with their collar on, as âsome are spat upon.â https://bit.ly/2teJ6pJhttps://bit.ly/2PDzUTr
Ellen Knickmeyer and Mike Blood, reporters, San Francisco, for reporting that California officials lacked technology to monitor a crumbling spillway after dark at Oroville Dam, the nationâs tallest dam, during a near catastrophe. https://apnews.com/a0e3a36b699b4b539f85ea8074b4508...
documented the plight of remote Alaska Native tribes facing a lean winter because the once bountiful salmon runs on the Yukon River have all but stopped, likely due to climate change.Freelance photographer Howard traveled to Stevens Village, more than 300 miles north of Anchorage along the Yukon. He made striking images and drone video as hunters tracked moose and caribou, hoping to get enough to replace what would usually be a large bounty of salmon dried and smoked for winter months. The hunters worked nearly around the clock, even cleaning and gutting moose under the northern lights.Flaccus reported from Oregon, describing how tribal members are upset they havenât received more help from state and federal authorities. Some feel their plight isnât getting as much attention as farmers, ranchers and others affected by climate change in the lower 48.The pairâs vivid text and photo package led reader engagement for the weekend and was near the top in pageviews for the same period.https://aplink.news/ndm
delivered a fast, smart follow-up after U.K.-based Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals announced a U.S. settlement over its role in the opioid epidemic. The teamâs analysis revealed that Mallinckrodt and one other generic drug manufacturer were responsible for the vast majority of high-dosage prescription painkillers â billions of generic pills â distributed throughout the U.S. during the height of the opioid epidemic. https://bit.ly/2IoXuQG
How best to capture the story of recovering opioid users?
Chicago-based medical writer Lindsey Tanner and Atlanta-based photographer/videographer David Goldman teamed up to produce an intimate look at a diverse group of people â among them, a lawyer, a businessman and a trucker â who got caught up in the worst opioid epidemic in U.S. history.
Their illuminating package â combining Tanner's powerful text and Goldman's photos with a haunting mini-documentary â earns the Beat of the Week.
worked sources to report exclusively that criminal charges would be filed against former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and others in the Flint water crisis, one of the worst human-made environmental disasters in U.S. history.White was reporting an unrelated story when he asked a source about any developments in the Flint investigation. That paid off with a tip â confirmed with a second source by Eggert â about the imminent charges.The bombshell exclusive hit a full two days before the official announcement and was APâs most-used story by customers online that day, widely credited by local and national news outlets, including the Detroit Free Press and the New York Times. https://bit.ly/35T67z6
dominated coverage in all formats as a former security guard took hostages during a standoff at a Manila shopping mall. AP was first on the scene with live video and sharp, resourceful handling of text and photos. APâs video was ahead of the competition on all the key developments, and we were the only agency still broadcasting live when authorities tackled the hostage taker as he spoke to the media.https://bit.ly/2U0rNm2https://bit.ly/2Qbby4t
They are the littlest victims of the opioid crisis: Tens of thousands of children forced into foster care because of a parentâs drug use. On Nov. 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released data from 2016 showing new foster care cases involving parents using drugs have hit the highest point in more than three decades of record-keeping.
Less than two weeks after that data was released, the AP transmitted a package of stories focused on two of the states with the biggest one-year increases: Indiana and Georgia.
The project came about thanks to an analysis begun months earlier by Washington-based data journalist Meghan Hoyer. Hoyer worked with an analyst to access exclusive county-level data on foster care entries over the past 15 years, giving the AP a unique, comprehensive and localized look at the issues surrounding children entering the system.
That data allowed New York-based national writers Matt Sedensky to focus his reporting in Indiana, where parental drug use was increasingly cited as the reason for foster care removals. Sedensky convinced the chief juvenile court judge to grant him access to courtrooms and files normally shielded from public view. He also worked to get a caseworker to let him follow her as she visited families caring for children removed from their birth parentsâ custody, and spent time with adoptive families, medical professionals and others affected.
A second story, by national writer David Crary, also based in New York, zoomed in on one mother who had lost her three daughters to foster care and her battle to overcome addiction and win them back. In interviews and email exchanges over several months, mother of three Kim Silvers told wrenching details of her experience â including an interview at her joyous graduation ceremony after completing the program.
For providing moving insight into the plight of the youngest victims of the opioid crisis and the struggle of some families to break free, Hoyer, Sedensky and Crary share this weekâs Best of the States prize.
explored the Lebanonâs often-neglected elderly population, particularly those who suffer from poverty amid the countryâs dual crises of the pandemic and a sinking economy. Lebanon has the greatest number of elderly in the Middle East, but most of the population above the age of 65 has no retirement benefits or health care coverage, leaving them to fend for themselves.The Beirut teamâs moving and informative all-formats story leads with an elderly couple who received a one-time $15,000 payout when the husband retired 20 years ago. They have since depended on charity to cover almost everything; the cash they get from charitable sources every month, once amounting to $400, is now barely worth $40 as Lebanonâs currency collapses.The story played widely and the AP team received messages from people around the world asking how they can help those featured in the story. Al-Jazeera ran a gallery of Hassanâs photos, while among those sharing the piece was a U.S. diplomat in the region who described it as âhorrifying details from Lebanonâs Year Zero.âhttps://aplink.news/mqqhttps://aplink.video/z53
Few places in America have been as hard hit by the pandemic as the Texas border, and the package by this all-formats team exposes the stark contrast between this part of the country and regions with greater resources.
With access to two hospitals overwhelmed by cases in the Rio Grande Valley, AP reporter Paul Weber, photographer Eric Gay and video journalist John Mone carefully documented stories of patients and staff, including a new mom in the maternity ward who unknowingly contracted the virus and had to be isolated from her newborn.
Weber wrote: âThe U.S. failure to contain the pandemic has been laid bare.â
For a compelling and hard-to-report all-formats package, Weber, Gay and Mone win this weekâs Best of the States award.
sidestepped resistance from Vice President Kamala Harrisâ office to report on the vice presidentâs connections to India, even as the coronavirus raged in India and the U.S. came under criticism for not doing more to aid the country. Harrisâ mother had immigrated to the U.S. from India in the 1950s to pursue a career as a scientist.White House reporter Jaffe lined up a Zoom interview with Harrisâ uncle in New Delhi, who had spoken with the vice president on his 80th birthday this spring. And New Delhi writer Krutika Pathi contributed comments from the administrator of a temple in the hometown of Harrisâ grandfather in southern Tamil Nadu state. Jaffe rounded out the story with India-related tweets from Harrisâ niece in California and background on the vice presidentâs many comments about her ties to India over the years.The story generated strong play, particularly in Indian media, including online versions of the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times.https://bit.ly/3tFOH1Chttps://bit.ly/3vZZdT7
for exclusive reporting that counterfeit vape pens and packaging are selling in in sight in downtown Los Angeles and online, fooling consumers, harming legitimate companies and possibly contributing to the spreading health crisis linked to vaping.https://bit.ly/2kW6B34https://bit.ly/2mtubEPhttps://bit.ly/2kocs0G
for obtaining an exclusive interview with the new interim U.S. attorney for half of Pennsylvania about his son's heroin death, the first time the prosecutor had spoken publicly about the tragedy. http://bit.ly/2iJCUfS
The scene, presented in the most vivid close-up, shows a paramedic frantically pushing an IV full of an opioid blocker into the vein of a woman turning blue and barely breathing. Then the radio squawks: Two more overdoses just reported. Where will Claire Galofaroâs riveting narrative go from here?
âThe womanâs eyes blinked openâ she writes next. Then: âRed lights on the phone at the 911 dispatch center flashed faster and faster until all 16 lines were screaming. They called from the dining room of a rickety house, the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, the bathroom of a gas station. `People are dying everywhere,â one caller said.â
AP Portland, Oregon, reporter Gillian Flaccus has long followed a simmering issue in the Klamath River Basin, a swath of rural agricultural land in Northern California and southern Oregon that is ground zero for the fight over an increasingly precious resource in the American West: water. Amid extreme drought in the region, the U.S. government has stopped irrigation to hundreds of farmers for the first time in history, while Native American tribes along the 257-mile Klamath River are watching fish species hover closer to extinction. The farmers face ruin and tribes worry their culture will vanish.Flaccus has developed deep sources with area farmers as well as tribal members and recently spent nearly a week in the remote area with freelance photographer Nathan Howard documenting an issue that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Working with New York photo editor and digital storyteller Alyssa Goodman, they produced a sweeping, striking all-formats package that showed the pain on both sides as people begin to realize the water may not be coming back. The package was among APâs most-viewed stories for Friday. For immersive journalism that explores the human consequences of drought in the U.S. West, Flaccus, Howard and Goodman receive this weekâs Best of the States award.
New York-based federal law enforcement reporter Jim Mustian never gives up on a story.
Sticking with a case he began covering at another news organization in another state more than two years ago, Mustian landed a jaw-dropping exclusive for the AP: That a trove of hundreds of confidential emails has surfaced allegedly showing executives of the NFLâs New Orleans Saints doing public relations damage control for the areaâs Roman Catholic archdiocese amid its clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The story had an immediate, visceral impact with readers and earned praise from fellow journalists.
Mustian will continue to chip away at this story and, hopefully, reveal more about the Saints and their involvement with the church. But for now, Mustianâs sticktoitiveness and tough accountability reporting earns him this weekâs Best of the States award.
Writing about teen pregnancy is difficult under any circumstances, requiring equal parts thoughtfulness and responsibility. That is how APâs team in Zimbabwe, photographer Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi and writer Farai Mutsaka, joined by South Africa video journalist Sebabatso Mosamo, approached the story of how pandemic lockdowns led to a sharp rise in teen pregnancies and the consequent loss of girlsâ educational opportunities, a problem affecting many southern African countries.
Gathering facts to support the story took months, as Mutsaka worked with officials to access the available data. Then the team faced the challenge of finding families willing to speak on the record. Most wouldn't talk publicly, but Mukwazhi and Mutsaka found a 13-year-old who wanted her story told. The pair repeatedly explained the possible consequences to her family and others they met with, ensuring the storyâs subjects fully understood what it meant to have their names and photos published.
The months of care and persistence paid off with compelling text and images, including a sensitive video by Mosamo. For responsible coverage providing insight into a difficult, important and often painful subject, the team of Mutsaka, Mukwazhi and Mosamo is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
Venezuela was one of the least-prepared countries in the world to fight the coronavirus. But it has arguably succeeded on one front: suppressing news of the virusâs true impact on its people. The country has acknowledged only 814 COVID deaths. But this Caracas-based all-formats AP team scored a breakthrough, telling the actual story in a country where contradicting the governmentâs official narrative can lead to detention.
Documenting two women working to ensure the survival of their fathers, the AP journalists delivered a hard-won, startling and exclusive look at the bleak state of health care and the plight of relatives who risk their own lives to care for loved ones in the COVID-19 wing of a rundown public hospital.
For their determination and courage to report this story and expose Venezuelaâs ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Smith, Cubillos and Arraez earn APâs Best of the Week honors.
As the COVID-19 pandemic killed more than a half-million Americans, it also quietly inflamed what had already been one of the countryâs greatest public health crises: addiction.
To tell that story, a multiformat AP team — writer Claire Galofaro, photographer David Goldman and video journalist Mike Householder — spent time in Huntington, West Virginia, exploring the resurgence of addiction in a community that had made progress against drug abuse. The AP team embedded with the cityâs Quick Response team for a week, providing a unique window into the suffering those with addiction have endured as the pandemic brought despair and cut off access to support systems and health care resources.
The evocative package resonated with readers, and the storyâs main subject said she was âecstaticâ over how well the story captured the world she sees every day.
For sensitive and compelling coverage that furthers the APâs efforts to explore the rippling consequences of COVID-19, the team of Galofaro, Goldman and Householder wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
