for an interview with Cardi B that confirmed she had turned down the Super Bowl halftime show in support of Colin Kaepernick. The story was picked up by outlets from GQ to Rolling Stone, and even People magazine, which had interviewed her, ran Landrum’s story. https://bit.ly/2BoaWBd
used the Freedom of Information Act and on-the-ground reporting in the Texas Panhandle to reveal a new Dust Bowl brewing on farmland above the nation’s biggest aquifer — and the halting efforts to stave it off.Farmers, communities and researchers have long known that groundwater in the Ogallala aquifer was steadily declining due to irrigation and might not recover. But while researching a story about disappearing prairie grasslands, Webber discovered that both issues were colliding to create another challenge: As climate change is making rainfall scarcer, farmland is blowing away just as it did during the Dust Bowl.Webber, a member of AP’s global environment team, talked to researchers who warned of huge farmland losses, and she traveling to the Panhandle town of Muleshoe where she told the story of farmers planting native grasses to preserve terrain as their wells struggle to produce water. She also reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had identified a Dust Bowl zone where farmers would receive extra money for grasslands conservation, and spent months prying loose government data showing that not all farmers were embracing the program.Webber’s comprehensive and engagingly written narrative, with photos by freelancer Mark Rogers, vividly captured the new Dust Bowl threatening an important agricultural region, and the efforts to keep farmers on their land. https://aplink.news/6or
for highlighting AP’s return to Aleppo for the first time in three years with an exclusive all-formats package on one family who returned to the city to find their home was ransacked and destruction all around. https://yhoo.it/2h3Azve
Matt Lee, Diplomatic Writer, Washington, and Mike Weissenstein, Caribbean news director, Havana, for reporting ahead of all competition that U.S. diplomats in Havana had suffered hearing loss after a series of suspected attacks with a sonic weapon. http://bit.ly/1sFaZk3
dominated the trial over the shooting-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, continuing the AP’s ownership of this story from the time since the plane crashed down in a Ukrainian sunflower field in 2014. A Dutch court convicted three men of murder for their role in the shooting down of the plane with a Russian surface-to-air missile that killed all 298 people aboard as it flew over a separatist-controlled region of eastern Ukraine. There were some 1,000 hits on AP video filed the day of the verdict.Read more.
reported on a land grab for a proposed oil pipeline, conveying the news in the most compelling way possible, from the perspective of the people involved. The story is told largely through the eyes of Clyde Robinson, a 80-year-old Memphis, Tennessee, landowner fighting against larger forces to keep his land in what advocates say is textbook environmental racism.Robinson, who is Black, compared the effort to seize his land through eminent domain to slavery, when members of his own family were not compensated for their work. He vowed that no amount of money would convince him to change his mind.Environmental lawyers who have taken up Robinson’s cause say there’s no public interest that would justify seizure of the land for a business project, while a spokeswoman for the pipeline project walked back a statement by a land agent that the company had chosen “a point of least resistance” for the pipeline's proposed path. That statement was interpreted by the project’s opponents as having discriminatory undertones. https://bit.ly/3bDr1VZ
for putting AP well ahead of competitors in reporting the findings of the first official report into last month's fiery crash landing of an Emirates airliner with 300 aboard. http://apne.ws/2cP8AP5
for solid source work in scoring an exclusive interview with a Navy SEAL injured in the hunt for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. https://apnews.com/aad5bef14ca94edc8176e8839634cfc...
for getting the first video of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in France after he ended a mysterious trip to Saudi Arabia that sparked fears he had been kidnapped. The images proved he is a free man.http://bit.ly/2i7RvWNhttp://bit.ly/2hTBfVD
With a dedication to continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine, the AP teams in and around Kyiv landed an interview with the Ukrainian president and offered a definitive all-formats chronicle of the mass killings in Bucha.
In the capital, AP journalists relentlessly pursued an interview with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Asia-Pacific news director Adam Schreck, video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and photographer Evgeniy Maloletka eventually sat down with the president in a bunker-like government building, the dramatic setting adding to the power of the all-formats interview.
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Kyiv, reporter Cara Anna and a team of visual journalists brought the horror of life and death in Bucha to readers around the world, walking the streets and talking with witnesses to the murders and other abuses under Russian occupation of the town. The team saw at least a dozen uncollected bodies and talked with two dozen survivors and witnesses, each telling horrific stories.
The teams’ coverage received strong play and reader engagement, a sign that AP’s customers and audience are still keenly interested in accurate, definitive accounts of the war.
For shedding light on an increasingly dark era for Ukraine, we honor Adam Schreck, Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Cara Anna, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Rodrigo Abd, Vadim Ghirda and Felipe Dana as AP’s Best of the Week — First Winners.
for being first to report Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s plan to realign the department in a way that advanced energy development on public lands. http://bit.ly/2t90rQs
for documenting a depressing, little-known trend: Many struggling U.S. factory cities have actually lost a greater proportion of white collar than blue collar jobs.
http://bit.ly/2oUERtyhttp://bit.ly/2DlBbX7
The arrest of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia for sitting without ordering anything turned into a major crisis for the coffee chain and sparked a national conversation on unconscious bias and overt racism.
But the two men at the center of the controversy sought to maintain their privacy as they tried to make sense of the ordeal. They even moved to a hotel to hide out as the scandal unfolded with numerous interview requests to tell their story.
Knowing the sit-down with the men was essential, Pennsylvania Editor Larry Rosenthal pressed for an interview, noting that one conversation with AP would relieve the pressure they were feeling from so many outlets. Errin Haines Whack, the AP’s national race and ethnicity writer, followed up with a written pitch. She noted she was based in Philly and wanted to hear both their version of events and what they hoped to see moving forward. In the end, that sealed the deal.
For landing the critical interview and delivering it in multiple formats, Whack is this week’s winner of Best of the States.
Coal-burning generating plants are closing in the U.S., and coal mines are shutting down amid worries of climate change and the new economies of renewable energy.
Against that backdrop, correspondents Felicia Fonseca and Susan Montoya Bryan traveled to Arizona’s remote Navajo Generating Station to the tell the story of workers, their families, a community and the tribal nations who have depended on coal and are feeling the profound effects of the plant’s impending closure.
In their all-formats package, the pair let workers explain what they were losing, and how the local economy is taking a massive hit with millions of dollars of revenue no longer flowing to the Hopi and Navajo tribes.
For a comprehensive, compelling look at the impact of coal’s decline on a community and a culture, Fonseca and Montoya earn this week’s Best of the States award.
In this week’s installment of Best of the Week, Pennsylvania correspondent Mike Rubinkam shows us how to translate a local story for a global audience, give it scope and reach, and in the process build a following for ongoing coverage.
Rubinkam, who covers northeastern Pennsylvania, was watching his local 6 p.m. newscast when a story caught his eye: A beloved, longtime Walmart greeter with cerebral palsy had been told that his position was being eliminated in favor of a new “customer host” position.
His interest piqued, the next morning Rubinkam interviewed the man, Adam Catlin, for his first story. That got a lot of attention on social media, but it was only the start.
Rubinkam followed up with three more stories, updating the public about Catlin’s talks with Walmart and interviewing greeters across the country. He also obtained photos of several greeters in their Walmart vests.
With each update, the story’s reach grew, with hundreds of online uses by AP customers and significant engagement on social media. And Walmart was listening. After a week of Rubinkam’s coverage, the mega-retailer announced it would make every effort to keep greeters with disabilities.
The story was a classic example of the impact that the AP’s footprint can have, bringing attention to an issue that surfaced locally but had not yet received national attention. The outcome was a change in corporate policy at one of the world’s biggest companies.
Because of his smart, dogged and curious reporting, and for capitalizing on the AP’s global reach, Rubinkam earns AP’s Best of the Week award.
The plot was bold: Fuel a military uprising in Venezuela by shifting the loyalty of key leaders, putting them in opposition to President Nicolas Maduro. But the plan to help the U.S.-backed opposition leader backfired at the moment of truth, prompting an understandable reaction from press to find out what went wrong.
While most other media speculated, AP Andean News Director Joshua Goodman used dogged reporting and years of source development to break the untold story of how the Obama and Trump administrations missed golden opportunities to woo two generals that the White House said were central to the plan.
The story garnered major play among customers and APNews users, and even earned the attention of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a driver of U.S. policy on Venezuela, who praised Goodman on Twitter.
For unearthing pivotal clues around a shadowy turn of international events, Goodman wins AP’s Best of the Week.
Late in the evening on Dec. 4, West Region photo editor Stephanie Mullen was monitoring a fire that broke out in Ventura County, about 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Mullen knew that if the notorious Santa Ana winds really picked up the flames could start burning homes.
She hired Northern California freelance photographer Noah Berger, an expert at shooting wildfires, and partnered him with Los Angeles-based staff photographer Jae Hong. Berger and Hong were in place as daylight broke and the fire surged into the city of Ventura, where it burned hundreds of homes. They rapidly shot and filed, allowing AP to deliver striking imagery before our competitors had even started their day.
The AP owned the coverage in those important early hours with impressive play globally.
Later that morning, Orange County-based photographer Chris Carlson worked his way through road closures to make images of horses being rescued and flames overwhelming homes in Los Angeles County. And as the week wore on, photographer Greg Bull snaked his way through roadblocks and heavy traffic to capture nighttime images of fires in San Diego County, then slept in his car and got haunting daybreak photos of the destruction.
For providing a photo package no competitor could rival, Hong, Carlson, Bull and Berger share this week’s Best of the States prize.
A team of AP journalists collaborated on an ambitious and innovative project to capture the approaching toll of 1 million U.S. deaths from COVID: They looked for the empty spaces, then told the stories of the individuals who had filled them. And they let the voices of those left behind reveal the mosaic of loss that has forever marked the country.
In true AP fashion, the package came together with extensive coordination across departments and formats, resulting in compelling content and an immersive presentation that resonated with customers and engaged the audience. The stories emerged among the most popular on AP News throughout the weekend and will be republished when the official toll hits 1 million. But the greatest barometer of success may have come came in the words of grateful loved ones of those featured in the stories.
For bringing fresh eyes and new voice to the once-unimaginable loss that will shape the way we live for years to come, the team of Adam Geller, David Goldman, Shelby Lum, Carla K. Johnson, Heather Hollingsworth, Samantha Shotzbarger and Elise Ryan is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
for breaking the news that the government would allow mining, drilling, grazing and recreation on lands around Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah that had been off limits. President Donald Trump downsized the protected area two years ago.
Impressed by AP’s fairness in coverage of the ongoing debate about managing public lands in the West, the Bureau of Land Management reached out to McCombs to share embargoed materials and the first interview by the region’s acting director ahead of the plan’s release. The APNewsBreak revealed that not only would the formerly protected lands be made available to a wide variety of uses but that those activities could have an adverse effect on the monument that is home to dramatic formations and vistas and is prime territory for paleontologists. https://bit.ly/2UafUcE
teamed up to expose those involved in Brazil's illegal gold trade, from the illicit mining on Indigenous lands to the global market.Mining on Indigenous lands in Brazil is not new. Numerous stories have been done on the practice, detailing the environmental and cultural impact of the illegal gold mining. But the AP investigation went a step further, naming those involved in the practice and tracing how the precious mineral travels from the mines of Brazil to global brands.For their widely read investigative stories, published in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Brazil News Director Biller, Latin America correspondent Goodman and freelance journalist Cowie obtained dozens of documents and conducted interviews with prosecutors, federal law enforcement agents, miners and industry insiders.Cowie and photographer Penner trekked hundreds of miles into the Amazon to report comprehensively on those engaged in the illegal mining and those involved in the illegal gold trade — a cross section of individuals and companies ranging from shady fly-by-night operators to legitimate businesses.Among their findings: Brazil is investigating an air taxi company contracted by the country’s health mionistry that transports Indigenous people and medical equipment. The company is also suspected of using its planes to bring in prospectors and supplies for illegal mining.And a thorough AP review of public records revealed that Marsam, a refinery that provided minerals for Brazil’s 2016 Olympic gold medals and now processes gold ultimately purchased by hundreds of well-known publicly traded U.S. companies — among them Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon — is linked to an intermediary accused by prosecutors of buying gold mined illegally on Indigenous lands and other areas deep in the Amazon rainforest.https://bit.ly/3HWThQDhttps://bit.ly/3qnwc3Nhttps://bit.ly/3FzcFSb
