May 22, 2020

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Exclusive: Chicago morgue copes with surge in deaths

used rare, exclusive access to one of the nation's busiest morgues, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, to document the facility as it coped with the surge of COVID-19 deaths while still handling its usual number of homicides. The AP team expected to find employees overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of bodies that more than tripled their workload. Instead they found a well-organized, efficient operation and employees who, while putting in seven-day weeks in some cases, spoke of their determination to provide dignity to the dead.https://bit.ly/2Tqx5I1https://bit.ly/3e5PzW1

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June 26, 2020

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: COVID-19 takes a growing toll on Latino communities

reported on a disturbing trend: the disproportionate toll of the coronavirus in Latino communities. With COVID-19 spreading deeper into the U.S., the team told the stories of individuals impacted by the pandemic, vividly illustrating the data showing that Latinos make up large portions of infected patients even in areas where they were a relatively small share of the population. https://bit.ly/2Vetpd4

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Feb. 05, 2021

Best of the Week — First Winner

With sourcing, preparedness, AP breaks news on death of pioneering actress Cicely Tyson

AP national writer Hillel Italie took a call Thursday evening from a longtime source with an unexpected tip: Groundbreaking actress Cicely Tyson, known for her roles playing strong, fiercely dignified Black women, was dead. 

Italie set off to get the news on the wire quickly, while also alerting colleagues. That included entertainment writer Mark Kennedy who had met Tyson years earlier. Kennedy had decided that when the time came, the AP obituary would have to capture the breadth and achievement of her life and career. And he had prepared just that.

The AP story moved at least 15 minutes before other outlets, earning more than 265,000 page views and front page headlines.

Celebrity obituaries are intensely competitive; Italie and Kennedy kept AP well in front, through source work, commitment and solid preparation. For that, they win AP’s Best of the Week award.

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Feb. 18, 2022

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Family trusts AP with news of filmmaker Ivan Reitman’s death

landed a clean scoop on the death of director-producer Ivan Reitman thanks to her reputation for professionalism on the film beat. Los Angeles-based Bahr received a call from a source during the Super Bowl, saying the 75-year-old Reitman had died and the family trusted her to break the story. That set Bahr and AP into motion on an obit that made news, even on a busy Sunday night. Read more

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May 20, 2022

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Deep reporting tells of Black Kansas teen’s in-custody death

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 “C.J.” Lofton, but Kansas City reporter Hollingsworth sensed a backstory waiting to be told. Her exhaustive reporting and Sheridan’s revealing video tell the story of a troubled youth and the disturbing confluence of events and decisions leading to his death.Read more

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Sept. 16, 2022

Best of the Week — First Winner

Sweeping AP coverage captures the life, death of Queen Elizabeth II and a nation in mourning

Years of AP preparation and planning paid off when first word came early Thursday evening in London: Queen Elizabeth II had died.

Customers had an AP Flash within a minute, followed by all-formats coverage that was stunning for its speed and scope, from a comprehensive obituary to video and photo retrospectives, profiles of Charles and Camilla, a look at global tributes, a piece on the complex reaction of former British colonies, and much more. Countless AP staffers across bureaus and continents contributed, with London staffers critical to the core coverage.

Performance for the all-formats coverage bore witness to the exceptional work — the main obit alone had 1.1 million pageviews on AP News.

For remarkable journalism still unfolding as the queen’s funeral approaches, the London-based team of Susie Blann, Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless, Sylvia Hui, Samira Becirovic, Brian Friedman, Pete Brown, Naomi Koppel, Anne-Marie Belgrave, Martin Cleaver and Frank Griffiths, and colleagues near and far, receives AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

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Sept. 25, 2020

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

India team exposes the truth behind India’s low virus death rate

delivered an ambitious all-formats package led by a compelling character profile to unravel the mystery behind India’s 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 wasn’t counted as a coronavirus victim by doctors who said the virus was “incidental” 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 weren’t tested for it.https://bit.ly/2Ev4tZZ

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Sept. 04, 2020

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP shocks world with first word of death of ‘Black Panther’ star Chadwick Boseman

AP entertainment video manager Ryan Pearson had interviewed Chadwick Boseman eight times since 2013. He knew the actor and his work well, and he’d worked closely with the actor’s publicist and her company. 

That’s why the publicist’s first media call after Boseman’s death was to Pearson and the AP – 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 AP’s customers and audience, Pearson wins AP’s Best of the Week.

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March 29, 2019

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Holding police accountable for pot grower’s bulldozer death

for obtaining exclusive details and interviews in seeking to hold police accountable for the death of a man caught growing 10 pot plans on public land. The man was run over by a bulldozer commandeered by state police as they searched thick brush for him, a slow-speed “chase” described by an expert on police procedure as “outlandish.” Rubinkam learned that police had privately apologized to the family for the incident, and he had first word of a federal civil rights lawsuit against state police and others. https://bit.ly/2FBXj3G

March 08, 2019

Best of the States

Only on AP: Death of ‘hood CNN’ video pioneer exposes gangland reporting risks

There’s always a better story behind a statistic.

Chicago’s homicide rate is one of the worst in the United States. By digging into one drive-by shooting, Chicago-based legal affairs reporter Michael Tarm and Houston-based video journalist John Mone found out how one victim’s life had inspired a generation of gang territory storytellers.

Telling it took a lot of sourcework.

Tarm had already been working on a story about social media and gangs, and he’d watched a few of Zack Stoner’s reports on Chicago street gangs and rappers on his ZackTV1 YouTube channel. When reports surfaced that Stoner was gunned down, Tarm began to look deeper, stumbling across a wider story – about a new brand of gutsy gangland reporters in Chicago and elsewhere who have avid followers on YouTube.

Getting access to the storytellers was tough, but eventually the name of Texas-based reporter Shawn Cotton emerged. Cotton was eager to discuss Stoner, his impact on the genre and the effect his killing had on him and others. Mone rode along with Cotton to the Meadow Brook subdivision in Fort Worth, dubbed “Murder Brook” by some of the kids on the street where Cotton filmed.

The multi-platform work played prominently with impressive reader engagement.

For relentless sourcework to show how a generation of storytellers is impacting its communities, Tarm and Mone win this week’s Best of the States.

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March 30, 2018

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP analysis: At least 19,000 in Iraq detained for terrorism, thousands sentenced to death

Prisons in Iraq held thousands of Islamic State group militants, but few outside the government knew exactly how many. Baghdad-based reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra set out to find out – and he wasn’t going to take a rough estimate for an answer.

With Baghdad correspondent Susannah George and Mideast enterprise editor Lee Keath, Abdul-Zahara analyzed documents he obtained from a Justice Ministry official, finding that the government was holding at least 19,000 people accused of ISIS connections or other terror-related offenses and that more than 3,000 of them had been sentenced to death.

For intrepid source work and analysis to establish the facts around the imprisonment of thousands of Islamic State group militants in Iraq, Abdul-Zahra, George and Keath win Beat of the Week.

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