for digging into the case of an 82-year-old man who was suddenly arrested in small-town Wisconsin for a 43-year-old double killing. Research and Morenoâs shoe-leather reporting put him in touch with sources and relatives to deliver the chilling tale of the neighbor who just might be a murderer. https://bit.ly/2XsijQV
Execution coverage often focuses on the condemned inmate or the manner of death. So, faced with covering his eighth execution â a Florida serial killer â Tallahassee correspondent Brendan Farrington told the extraordinary personal story of a victim who escaped and helped police find the man after he raped her decades ago. That woman had chosen to witness the manâs execution.
Farrington doggedly tracked down the woman, now a sheriffâs deputy, who finally agreed to an interview on the eve of the execution. Her compelling story resonated with readers everywhere.
For his persistence and sensitivity in telling a personal and emotional victimâs story in what could have been a rote story on a serial killerâs execution, Farrington wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
It was a tide of humanity that just kept getting larger.
Driven from their homes by mass violence after a clash between insurgents and police, Rohingya Muslims from a borderland state in Buddhist-majority Myanmar streamed into neighboring Bangladesh where they faced homelessness, more potential violence and deeply uncertain futures.
Day after excruciating day, an AP team of journalists on both sides of the border painted a portrait of human misery and the hope that always lurks within it â and cast doubt on claims by Myanmarâs government that Rohingya villagers set fire to their own homes.
For their work to focus the worldâs attention on the Rohingyaâs exodus, Delhi staffers â photographer Bernat Armangue, correspondent Muneeza Naqvi and video journalist Al-emrun Garjon â and Myanmar correspondent Esther Htusan win this weekâs Beat of the Week award.
Shootings in Chicago have captured national headlines, and for good reason: The city has among the highest rates of teenage gun violence in the nation. But where else in the U.S. are teenagers most likely to be killed or injured by gunfire? Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles?
In an exclusive analysis, journalists from the AP, working jointly with the USA Today Network, arrived at an unexpected answer: Except for Chicago, the places with the highest rates of teen gun violence in America are smaller and mid-sized cities â towns like Wilmington, Delaware, population 72,000.
AP data journalists Meghan Hoyer and Larry Fenn led the analysis of 3½ yearsâ worth of shooting cases provided by the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. Baltimore reporter Juliet Linderman, with significant assists from Albany reporter Michael Hill and Savannah correspondent Russ Bynum, picked it up from there. Video journalist Allen Breed produced a powerful video that illustrates the danger and despair, along with the difficulties that WIlmington is having in addressing the problems. The package also was enhanced with graphics from interactives producer Maureen Linke.
For their work revealing a surprising side of teenage gun violence in America, state reporters Linderman, Bynum and Hill, video journalist Breed, data journalists Hoyer and Fenn, and graphic artist Linke share this weekâs Best of the States award.
Amazing things can come out of political demonstrations â and sometimes, they have nothing to do with politics. Miami-based video journalist Josh Replogle was covering a protest by about 3,000 people outside Donald Trumpâs Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach when a colleague pointed out a striking woman wearing a Cleveland Indians hat. That, he was told, was Casey Anthony â once acquitted in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter in a case that became an international obsession.
Replogle did a quick Google search to confirm that this was, indeed, the woman once dubbed âthe most hated mom in America.â He then obtained the first in-depth interviews with her since she was accused, an accomplishment that earns him the Beat of the Week.
Thereâs always a better story behind a statistic.
Chicagoâs 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 victimâs 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 heâd watched a few of Zack Stonerâs 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 â 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 âMurder Brookâ 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 weekâs Best of the States.
picked up on a seemingly mundane local story: A state working group was looking into problems with Oregonâs public defense system. That seed led the Portland-based reporter to interview attorneys, private investigators and a suspect in an attempted murder, revealing that the combination of a post-pandemic glut of delayed cases and the stateâs severe shortage of public defenders means hundreds of low-income defendants donât have legal representation â sometimes in serious felony cases â and judges have dismissed several dozen cases.Flaccus found similar crises unfolding from Maine to New Mexico. And she showed the many painful repercussions of the problem, highlighting how young victims of sex abuse and trafficking are hesitant to come forward because of disillusionment with the system.Read more
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 teamsâ coverage received strong play and reader engagement, a sign that APâs 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 APâs Best of the Week â First Winners.
The Minneapolis team of Amy Forliti, Steve Karnowski and Mohamed Ibrahim used diligent beat work and hustle to give AP a major win on the surprise guilty plea from one of three fired Minneapolis police officers facing trial in George Floydâs killing.Forliti, who monitors legal developments around the officers in the Floyd case, spotted an unexpected May 18 hearing scheduled for Thomas Lane, but no other details â unusual for the Floyd case. Karnowski and Ibrahim were quickly hustled to the hearing while Forliti reworked longstanding prep copy for a possible plea â which was exactly what happened.
Although two other outlets also learned of the hearing and were in attendance, AP had an alert out five minutes ahead of the nearest competitor, and an hour or more ahead of some major national news organizations.Read more
investigated a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agentâs deadly shooting of a mentally ill neighbor in Mississippi, revealing new details that raise questions about why the agent never faced trial on a murder charge â and the role played by DEA brass to quickly insert themselves into the case, blocking local authorities from talking to the agent.Mustian exclusively obtained hundreds of pages of investigative documents and transcripts, and spent days on the ground interviewing people with knowledge of the case for a story that questions the justification for the shooting, how Agent Harold Duane Poole avoided trial and whether the DEA overreached to protect one of its own amid a flurry of misconduct cases in the agency.Read more
teamed up to break the news that three white men had been convicted of federal hate crimes in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man killed two years ago as he ran through a Brunswick, Georgia, neighborhood.With extensive prep in hand for each of the defendants, APmoved news alerts in rapid succession as the verdicts were read, beating local and national competition. Read more
reported on an overlooked angle in the saga of NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson, who was fined and suspended for 11 games after he was accused of sexual misconduct with a massage therapist. Walker examined the impact Watsonâs case and the wave of coverage surrounding it has had on the massage therapy profession, which has long battled stigmas and misconceptions.Pro football writer Walker covered a national convention of massage therapists, coincidentally held just a block from the stadium where Watsonâs Cleveland Browns will play. Convention attendees were initially reluctant to speak with her, but Walker used her familiarity with massage therapy to get them to open up about the Watson case and other challenges to the profession. She also made video and photos for the multiformat package which played widely in North America.Read more
AP investigative reporter Jason Dearen received a curious email on Dec. 1, claiming to be from Joseph Moore, a man DearenâŻhad written about months earlier. Moore was an FBI undercover informant who had infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Florida and disrupted a murder plot by three klansmen working as prison guards.
Dearen and AP visual journalist Robert Bumsted soon found themselves in Florida interviewing Moore about his years in the klan.
Moore said heâd identified dozens of law enforcement officers who were either sympathetic to the klan, or active members, telling AP, âIt is more prevalent and consequential than any of them are willing to admit.â Dearen also came away with details to further challenge Florida officialsâ claims that they have no indication of wider klan or other criminal gang activity among their prison guards.
The âmust readâ story, accompanied by Bumsted's video, lit up online and numerous film producers inquired about film rights.
For chasing the story so long and covering it so well that it brought an underground FBI informant out of the shadows, Dearen and Bumsted earn APâs Best of the Week â First Winner honors.
When the first murder conviction came down in the closely watched trial of three men accused in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, APâs news alert rocketed out a stunning nine minutes ahead of competitors. Savannah, Georgia, correspondent Russ Bynum anchored that coverage on the final day as he had single-handedly for weeks, writing thousands of words over the course of the trial.
His deep knowledge of the complex case was key to preparing for the potential verdicts. Bynum and team had a plan in place: AP would send out an alert as soon as a first murder conviction came down, rather than wait for verdicts on all three defendants. That decision gave AP the edge over news organizations that waited for all the verdicts to be read, and no doubt contributed to APâs overall dominance of the story.
The verdicts were followed with analysis, explainers and enterprise. AP also produced 13 video edits on the final day and captured telling photos inside the courtroom before, during and after the convictions.
Bynum was at the heart of APâs collaborative effort. For his fierce dedication to the case, Russ Bynum earns APâs Best of the Week â First Winner honors.
When San Francisco-based data reporter Camille Fassett obtained a national dataset on police use of force, she and Washington-based law enforcement team leader Colleen Long pored over the numbers, looking for a new angle on the well-trod issue. Then investigative fellow Helen Wieffering hit on something â the data included numerous instances of force used against teens and kids.
Looking closer, what they found was stunning: 3,000 cases over 11 years where police used force against children, some as young as 6.
To put faces and voices to the numbers, the reporters spent months interviewing children, teens and parents. The team also secured police body camera footage that backed up the stories. The resulting package was a remarkable all-formats look at how Black and brown children are disproportionately affected by police force.For a deeply reported story that explores a little-recognized aspect of police use of force, the team of Fassett, Long and Wieffering is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
was steadfast: Before publicly identifying two men suggested as suspects in the 2018 murder of Mollie Tibbetts, he needed to talk to them. The sentencing of another man convicted in the stabbing death of the University of Iowa student had been delayed after his defense attorneys offered up Gavin Jones and Dalton Hansen as possible suspects. Foley was appalled that Iowa media outlets were identifying the two men as suspects without trying to reach them for comment. Neither man had been contacted â by law enforcement, news media or anyone else â after they were named by the defense.That changed when Foley dug deep to unearth phone numbers buried in unrelated court documents. When reached, Hansen called the allegations crazy but confirmed his connection to Jones and said he knew the inmate who was implicating the pair in the case. Jones also eventually answered Foleyâs call, but demanded to know how Foley got the number, started to swear at him and almost hung up. But Foley calmed the man, keeping him on the line long enough to maintain his innocence and assert he has alibis lined up to share with investigators whenever they reach out to him. âThe cops havenât talked to me. No one has talked to me. You are the first person that has called me,â he told Foley.Other outlets had stories about the judgeâs expected ruling rejecting the defense arguments, but Foley was exclusive, leading with the comments of both men accused by defense lawyers.https://aplink.news/ubk
From major breaking news in the U.S. to unmatched international enterprise reporting, two very different entries — worlds apart but united by excellence — produce a rare joint winner for APâs Best of the Week.
First, APâs teamwork delivered unmatched breaking and explanatory cross-format coverage around the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, a case that framed the conversation on race and policing. Then, the trio of Cara Anna, Nariman El-Mofty and Mohaned Awad produced a riveting package on a Tigray fatherâs harrowing journey with his newborn twins, a stark illustration of the devastating war in Ethiopiaâs Tigray region.
For powerful journalism that defines the range and depth of APâs global coverage, the all-formats teams behind this compelling work share APâs Best of the Week honors.
When Chicago police released the body camera video of an officer fatally shooting a 13-year-old boy in an alley, AP staffers in Chicago and across the AP sprang into action with aggressive reporting, sharp enterprise follow-ups and thoughtful standards discussions about how to responsibly portray the gruesome incident for photo and video clients.
The end result was three days of distinctive spot and enterprise coverage on a story that resonated with audiences around the world, especially with renewed focus on police violence in the midst of the Derek Chauvin murder trial.
For comprehensive coverage providing depth, detail and context on the shooting, the all-formats team of Michael Tarm, Don Babwin, Sara Burnett, Kat Stafford, Dave Bauder, Shafkat Anowar, Robert Bumsted and Derek Karikari shares this weekâs Best of the States award.
As the search for Alabama fugitives Casey White and Vicky White captured the attention of the world, Washington-based federal law enforcement reporter Mike Balsamo reached out, working his network of sources in the Justice Department and the U.S. Marshals Service for details.
Balsamo also connected with the U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Alabama, knowing he would be the person most likely to have the inside information that would enable AP to put together a clear timeline of a messy escape saga littered with gaps and confusing accounts.
That contact turned out to be pivotal after the pursuit came to a violent end in Indiana on May 9. The marshalâs exclusive account of the 11-day search, coupled with details Balsamo picked up from other sources, gave AP a story rich with previously unreported detail and context. It also made for an exceptionally easy-to-follow narrative. The resulting story played widely, from Alabama to Australia.
For using all his resources to distinguish APâs coverage on this extremely competitive story, Mike Balsamo is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
dominated the trial over the shooting-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, continuing the APâs 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 inâŻthe shooting down of the planeâŻwith 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.
