for her persistence in getting the Department of Veterans Affairs to acknowledge its health insurance plan was running out of money despite an emergency infusion of funds. http://bit.ly/2xZ7gmw
for revealing that a series of mystery illnesses in Cuba had started by hitting undercover CIA agents, and that yet another American had been confirmed as a victim. http://bit.ly/2wO5KlF
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.
A mentally disabled Louisiana man walked free last week after 20 years in prison for a killing his attorneys say he didn't commit. But New Orleans reporter Janet McConnaughey questioned why his plea agreement blames him for obstructing justice.
Corey Williams was a 16-year-old who still sucked his thumb, often wet himself and had been hospitalized for extreme lead poisoning when Shreveport, Louisiana, police brought him in for questioning in 1998 about a shooting that killed a pizza deliveryman.
For hours, he said he was innocent. Finally, Williams told police he did it and wanted to go home and lie down.
Two decades later, with doubts swirling around his murder conviction and the case submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court for review, Williams accepted a plea agreement, pleading guilty to manslaughter and obstructing justice.
McConnaughey asked the district attorney's office for documentation outlining the plea deal. There it was: Williams said heâd obstructed justice by removing evidence from the crime scene and by providing âa false inculpatory statement to police." Williamsâ signature was in inch-high printing, with big circles over the iâs.
McConnaugheyâs story received strong use by AP customers. For pursuing the underlying details and shining a light on a deal that set Williams free â but only after putting the blame on himself for a false confession â McConnaughey wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
for a complete, all-formats explanation of what gene-edited food is and what it means for people who eat food (i.e. everyone), farmers and animals.https://bit.ly/2B5LWyMhttps://bit.ly/2QcdkTZ
for the first on-camera interview with the Brazilian consul general, one of few people to meet with former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested over suspicion of underreporting millions in income. Ghosn, once one of the most powerful men in the business world, was reportedly holding up well during his detention in Japan, and was asking for thrillers to read. https://bit.ly/2QMhP8l
The nationâs health isnât improving. In some key measures, itâs getting worse. How is that even possible in an era of genetic medicine and other advances? And how could the AP connect that story to our customersâ own neighborhoods?
AP medical writer Mike Stobbe and data journalist Nicky Forster started with those questions and delivered a winning package on why American life expectancy is getting shorter.
The package ran shortly after the release of the CDCâs annual mortality report which found that U.S. life expectancy had declined again. To find out what was behind the numbers, Stobbe returned to West Virginia, a place he declared the unhealthiest place in America 10 years ago. He connected with people trying to get healthier, witnessed the headwinds of the opioid crisis and explained how difficult it is to improve health en masse.
Forster, meanwhile, assembled an array of data that explained what was happening around the U.S. He matched longevity estimates for more than 65,000 neighborhoods with demographics, and found striking connections to income, race and education. He then built an interactive that allowed readers to see life expectancy in their own neighborhood and wrote a sidebar on the APâs findings.
For getting beyond the numbers for a richer understanding of why American lifespans are shrinking, and giving AP customers the data to localize their stories, Stobbe and Forster win the weekâs Best of the States award.
for a particularly accessible all-formats package connecting weather extremes to global warming. The pair analyzed a centuryâs worth of data from more than 400 U.S. weather stations, finding that over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to experience record-breaking heat rather than record-setting cold. One city â Pasadena, California â hit 145 heat records before it set a daily cold record. Forster also assigned the data to counties so that AP customers could localize whatâs happening in their communities.https://bit.ly/2uvH55Lhttps://bit.ly/2OtNWWG
AP reporter Michelle Smith was working on another project in June when she came up with the names of a dozen or so public health officials who had quit, retired or been fired. Sensing a trend, Smith and reporters at Kaiser Health News continued to track those departures as the pandemic worsened and the backlash against public health restrictions became more strident.
The journalists contacted officials in all 50 states and interviewed dozens of people, finding a public health leadership vacuum developing at a critical time in the pandemic. They told the stories of public servants who toiled through the pandemic only to be reviled by their neighbors — including the wrenching story of an official whose husband would not even follow her recommendation to require masks in the family store. The timely all-formats story included a data distribution, interactive graphics and a sidebar with portraits and quotes of public health officials.
For a deeply reported package that examines a vital component of the pandemic response, Smith, Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Hannah Recht and Lauren Weber earn this weekâs Best of the States award.
When news first broke in early August about mysterious incidents involving U.S. diplomats in Cuba, the AP was all over the story, beating the competition to several key early details. These included talk among officials about a possible âsonic attackâ and suspicions that ranged from Cuban culpability to possible intervention by an outside culprit like Russia.
But so many questions were left unanswered. And with the FBI deep into one of the most perplexing investigations in modern diplomatic history, U.S. officials in the State Department, White House and elsewhere were saying as little as possible about what they were learning.
Thatâs when the Washington bureau put together a multi-beat team of reporters to try to put the pieces together. Their comprehensive work wins Beat of the Week.
for their in-depth, analytical package looking at 30 years of global warming. https://bit.ly/2yU6NWF
A small reference to a big number in a Wall Street Journal story about the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caught medical writer Mike Stobbeâs attention. It reported that Dr. Robert Redfieldâs salary was $375,000.
That seemed like a large sum, much more than previous CDC directors had been paid, thought Stobbe, who has covered the nationâs top public health agency for more than 12 years.
His hunch proved correct. His subsequent reporting showed that Redfieldâs compensation was nearly double that of the previous Trump administration nominee, who resigned after six months, and more than the governmentâs other top health officials.
The scoop â which led Redfield to later ask for a pay cut â nets Stobbe this weekâs Beat of the Week.
for a quickly turned AP data analysis that found that the vast majority of people who will be affected by President Donald Trumpâs decision to end a key health insurance subsidy are in states he won. http://bit.ly/2gnjqB2
for breaking major developments in the Senate Republicansâ struggles to get a health care bill, from the first word of the Congressional Budget Officeâs report that 22 million would be uninsured under the bill, to a key senatorâs defection, to plans to delay a vote until after the July 4th recess. http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-pol...
for exposing the plight of a prisoner, ill while awaiting extradition to Spain, whose health care was being neglected until APâs report led a federal judge to intervene and force jailers to get him treatment. https://apnews.com/d2341eaf760a4e76b2b2d4932969def...
for obtaining a decade worth of private notes on every official trip taken by outgoing World Health Organization director-general Margaret Chan, allowing her to report on unusual meetings with Russia, North Korea and Turkmenistan. https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-exclusive-outgoing-h...
for breaking the news that a deal was in the works to revive the Republican health care bill in the House that lawmakers would pass by a razor-thin margin two days later. http://on.freep.com/2qsRFur
for using a public records request to become the first to obtain an analysis showing nearly 400,000 Arizona residents could lose Medicaid coverage under the GOP's proposed health care overhaul bill. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/arizona/ar...
for a profile of President Donald Trumpâs choice for an important health care post that shed light on the nomineeâs business arrangements and possible conflicts of interest while acting as an adviser to then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. http://apne.ws/2l9wuY2
A face transplant: Itâs one of the rarest of surgeries, a medically complex, emotionally fraught procedure â and a challenge to cover as a truly revealing news story and not just a sensational headline.
Thatâs why AP National Writer Sharon Cohenâs narrative of the first face transplant performed at the renowned Mayo Clinic was so remarkable, combining detailed reporting on state-of-the-art medical science with a unique tragedy-to-triumph human story. The narrative, Andyâs New Face, which engaged readers and commanded front pages for days after its release, earns the Beat of the Week.
