Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP investigation: Toxic chemicals lie beneath Fort Ord

spent a year investigating the possible health effects of groundwater and soil contamination under Fort Ord, a decommissioned U.S. Army base on the central California coast. A tip led AP to a Facebook group of hundreds of soldiers who had lived at the base and developed rare forms of cancer they believe were caused by contamination.The complex, all-formats story included in-depth interviews with those likely suffering health consequences of exposure at the base, which is on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation. The team revealed a discredited 25-year-old study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found no “likely” risk at the site, and documents showing the Army knew toxic chemicals had been improperly dumped at Fort Ord for decades, but took pains not to let that information become public. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Source work reveals push for diversity in climate fight

worked sources on Stafford’s newly expanded beat to land an exclusive on the launch of a climate justice campaign.The effort by the group Donors of Color Network would shift millions in funding toward environmental and justice groups led by Black Americans, other people of color and Indigenous people and came on the heels of President Joe Biden pledging to make environmental justice central to the fight against climate change. Stafford, AP investigative race writer, brought the story to life by taking readers on a tour of neighborhoods in Detroit’s 48217 ZIP code, where residents live against the backdrop of heavy industrial sites that have long been a major concern in the nation’s largest Black-majority city. Baltimore-based photographer Julio Cortez’s photos of Donors of Color co-founder Ashindi Maxton, the story’s lead character, rounded out the package. https://bit.ly/3d4zfaP

Best of the States

AP months ahead of New York state in identifying undercount of nursing home deaths

When AP reported exclusively last August that New York state was undercounting its COVID nursing home death toll by thousands, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ripped the story as part of a politically motivated “blame game.”

But the state’s own investigation, announced last week, reached a nearly identical conclusion, affirming AP’s reporting.

AP’s 2020 investigation had seized on the fact that New York counts just residents who died at nursing homes, not those who were transported to hospitals and died there. AP’s analysis of federal data indicated that the state’s official toll was undercounted by 65%, or well over 4,000 deaths. 

For sharp reporting that led the media pack, withstood criticism from the governor and months later was vindicated, this week’s Best of the States award goes to Bernard Condon, Matt Sedensky and Meghan Hoyer (now data director at The Washington Post).

Best of the Week — First Winner

Resourceful post-hurricane reporting yields exclusives on Louisiana oil spills

As Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana — launching strong AP coverage that would stretch from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast — Washington-based investigative reporter Michael Biesecker contacted federal and state officials who kept telling him they had no confirmed reports of oil or chemical spills along the coast.

But Biesecker’s inspection of aerial photos by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a different story. He found a worrying miles-long oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico off the region’s main oil and gas port, and another sheen coming from a massive oil refinery along the Mississippi River.

His persistence led to a series of exclusives on the two oil spills, including the news that divers had identified a broken undersea pipeline as the apparent source of the offshore slick.

For smart reporting that put AP ahead of the competition — and even ahead of the government and energy companies themselves — on an important environmental story in the wake of Ida, Biesecker is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Trump 2020 campaign secretly working with ex-Cambridge Analytica staffers

for revealing that despite its denials, Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is secretly working with former employees of disgraced political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, at a new, small data company with direct financial ties to Trump’s campaign manager. https://abcn.ws/2thovON

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Investigation: Your ‘locally sourced’ fish may not be local

for showing that a leading sustainable seafood distributor that claimed to track its fish to the very U.S. dock and even boat it came from was instead duping chefs and customers throughout the nation. https://bit.ly/2JSLNUs

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Source work leads to scoop on new mass facility for immigrant children

for breaking news that the U.S. government is opening a mass facility for migrant children in Texas and considering detaining hundreds more youth at three military bases, adding up to 3,000 beds to the overtaxed system. Acting on a tip from a key source, Burke left other news organizations scrambling, and she had details no one could match, including the number of beds planned for each new facility amid a wave of new arrivals, and context about the two deaths of children inside the system. https://bit.ly/2K8NJc4

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

APNewsBreak: Trump Jr. and fundraiser had longtime undisclosed links

for revealing exclusively that Donald Trump Jr. and a hedge fund manager who helped raise millions for the Trump campaign – and who later lobbied National Security Council officials – had an undisclosed business relationship dating back years. http://nydn.us/2GRAQyK

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Trump's wildlife protection board stuffed with trophy hunters

for breaking news that the Trump administration’s new U.S. advisory board created to help rewrite federal rules for importing heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinos was stacked with trophy hunters. https://usat.ly/2IvcHyh

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP ahead with two scoops on NC election investigation

for putting AP ahead on two major stories related to the investigation of ballot fraud in a 2018 congressional race in North Carolina – first with news that election officials had pressed prosecutors after the 2016 election to charge the man at the center of fraud allegations in 2018, and then obtaining a January 2017 letter predicting that ballot fraud would happen again unless the administration pursued a criminal case.https://bit.ly/2BXS8Inhttps://bit.ly/2R3LaMe

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

$30,000 rumor? Tabloid paid for, spiked, salacious Trump tip

for uncovering a secret $30,000 agreement – with a $1 million penalty – negotiated by the parent company of the National Enquirer to prevent other news organizations from investigating a salacious tip about Donald Trump's sex life until after the 2016 presidential election. https://bit.ly/2IND95x

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

New Trump campaign chief lends name to penny stock tied to felon

for an exclusive investigation into a $10 million deal between Brad Parscale, named as President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, and a penny-stock firm with a questionable history and longstanding ties to a convicted fraudster. http://bit.ly/2F1eayk

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Reporting on horrific child sex abuse case reveals systemic failures

reported exclusively about a civilian U.S. Army employee who led a child sex in which he victimized his own adopted son and put national security at risk, all while the State of Arizona and the Department of Defense missed or ignored signs of his criminal behavior.Rezendes was investigating a separate story in Arizona when a source told him about the case. His reporting revealed that complaints had been filed against David Frodsham, the man at the center of the abuse ring, for years, but Arizona still allowed him to foster and adopt children, while the military kept him in sensitive management jobs, even though his behavior made him a national security risk.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP Investigation: Secret report linked Honduran national police chief to cartel coke delivery

Reporters Christopher Sherman, Martha Mendoza and Garance Burke were weeks into a deep look at police misconduct in Honduras, where public mistrust of law enforcement is among the highest in the world. So when they heard a new national police chief had been appointed, they immediately shifted gears and began asking questions about him.

What they found was explosive – a confidential government security document that detailed a troubling allegation regarding the force. It said the newly named National Police Chief Jose David Aguilar Moran had once helped a drug cartel leader pull off the delivery of nearly a ton of cocaine. The clandestine haul, worth at least $20 million on U.S. streets, was packed inside a tanker truck that, the report said, was escorted by corrupt police officers to the home of Wilter Blanco, a drug trafficker recently convicted in Florida and now serving a 20-year sentence.

For their dogged reporting, Sherman, Mendoza and Burke share the Beat of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Joint investigation exposes sex abuse in mega dance company

spent months digging into the secretive world of teen dance competitions, combing through court records and interviewing dozens of dancers to reveal a culture of sexual abuse and silence.In collaboration with The Toronto Star, the investigative reporters focused on one of the world’s largest dance companies, Break the Floor, documenting sexual misconduct and assault claims against some of the most famous and influential dancers in the United States, including the company’s founder and CEO, who sold the company as he came under the joint team’s scrutiny.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

Joint AP/‘Frontline’ investigation reveals deadly failures in US medical supply chain

With exceptional multiformat journalism, AP investigative reporters Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman exposed the collapse of the U.S. medical equipment supply chain that led to deadly shortages of crucial personal protective equipment during the pandemic.

In collaboration with public television’s “Frontline,” the Center for Global Reporting and AP reporters worldwide, “America’s Medical Supply Crisis” identified a series of missteps in the U.S. that contributed to one of the highest death rates per capita in the world.

The investigation elicited strong public engagement, praise from public health experts and response by bipartisan members of Congress.

For breaking down a complex topic to show the critical importance of medical supply chains and the human cost when those supply chains fail, Linderman and Mendoza share AP’s Best of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Engineers: Lives lost in Mexico quake could have been saved

for discovering that nearly two-thirds of the building collapses in Mexico City’s devastating earthquake last month were caused by a risky building technique now forbidden in seismic hot spots elsewhere. http://bit.ly/2yyvIwS

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Ivanka Trump’s supply chains in China cloaked in secrecy

for her story showing how the deepening secrecy surrounding Ivanka Trump’s supply chains makes it impossible to understand who the company is doing business with in China. http://bit.ly/2yDDlQK

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Tip, source work reveal Pence immigration order to CDC

worked sources and turned a tip into an exclusive story detailing how Vice President Mike Pence ordered the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to use the pandemic as justification to halt immigration into the U.S., over the objections of the agency's scientists who twice refused to take the action.

Burke notified Dearen, who started working CDC sources. After a couple of fruitless weeks, he succeeded in identifying a person close to the events who agreed to talk, and a former Pence aide who confirmed the story on the record.

Meanwhile Burke moved the story beyond politics to bring home the order’s human toll. She gathered data that showed nearly 150,000 people, including 8,800 migrant children, already had been expelled under the order, and she interviewed the father of a 16-year-old Honduran boy who had been held in government custody under the order.

Even on a weekend dominated by news of Trump’s hospitalization, the piece was the top story on AP News and was widely used and cited by local and national news outlets. https://bit.ly/2SvTB14

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP connects palm oil industry, top brands to abuse of women

followed up on their initial reporting that exposed widespread labor abuse in the palm oil industry, conducting a comprehensive investigation into the brutal treatment of women in the production of the omnipresent ingredient, including rapes by plantation supervisors, serious health issues from toxic chemicals and injuries from back-breaking loads. The pair then traced the oil produced by these women to the supply chains of top Western beauty brands — including conglomerates that make billions of dollars as they market the empowerment of women.Mason and McDowell persuaded dozens of female workers to tell their searing stories, spending months getting the women to trust them and then arranging clandestine meetings in an effort to protect the workers from retaliation by plantation owners. They bypassed the stonewalling of major Western brands that refused to say whether their products contain palm oil by using company data and U.S. Customs records to link the workers’ abuse to the brands’ palm oil supply chains.The package featured striking digital display, video and evocative photos by Indonesia-based stringer Binsar Bakkara, as well as a powerful series of closeups of workers’ hands cradling familiar products containing the fruits of their labor.The story is nearing 250,000 page views on AP News. The Clorox Company, which owns Burt’s Bees Inc., said it would raise the allegations of abuses with its suppliers, calling AP’s findings “incredibly disturbing.” https://bit.ly/3liKAV3https://bit.ly/2VeVUXRhttps://bit.ly/3mlXgfd