for scoring an exclusive on-camera interview with a whistleblower cleric, establishing a timeline of sexual misconduct allegations against a former Argentine bishop. The accusations by the bishopâs former top deputy undermined the Vaticanâs claims that it had learned of the charges just a few months ago. https://bit.ly/2MvhHWf
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.
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
When smartphone video emerged more than two months after Ahmaud Arbery was killed by a white father and son while running through a Georgia neighborhood, the case burst into the national consciousness. AP race and ethnicity writer Aaron Morrison headed to Brunswick, Georgia, seeking to tell the full story of the 25-year-oldâs life.
Morrison and video journalist Sarah Blake Morgan interviewed Arberyâs mother on the road where her son was killed. That conversation became a centerpiece of the text and visual package, with further reporting by Russ Bynum and Kate Brumback completing the picture.
For a nuanced and unflinching profile of Arberyâs life that spotlights the racism experienced by many young black men and captures the pain of a grieving family, Morrison, Morgan, Bynum and Brumback share this weekâs Best of the States award.
looked at at the circumstances faced by Mississippiâs Black voters for the third installment of APâs âLooking For Americaâ road trip series.The highly evocative package was framed in the context of the âMississippi Burningâ murders of three civil rights activists in 1964 â and it found that too little has changed. The AP team saw the issue through the eyes of a now-elderly activist who was close to two of the murder victims more than 50 years ago. They reported that while poll taxes and tests on the state constitution may be gone, Black voters still face obstacles such as state-mandated ID laws and the disenfranchisement tens of thousands of former prisoners.The text, photos and video, with digital presentation by multimedia journalist Samantha Shotzbarger, perfectly captured the frustration that so many decades later, Black voters are still challenged by the state.The work was highlighted in a long entry in Politicoâs Playbook, and attracted attention in the U.S. and internationally.https://bit.ly/31THAI1https://bit.ly/3jzaKCphttps://bit.ly/3oCX50E
turned a readerâs polite complaint into an engaging mystery story of 17th century piracy. Amateur historian Jim Bailey questioned why AP had run an item on a 1796 penny found in a Maine churchyard. The coin was not significant but, he added, he had found one that was. The tip put Kole and Senne on the trail of ancient Arabian coins unearthed around New England that were traced to Henry Every, an English pirate whose crew raped, murdered and pillaged in 1695, making the captain the planetâs most-wanted man. Kole interviewed historians and archaeologists who said Baileyâs discovery â a 1693 Yemeni coin found with a metal detector in a pick-your-own fruit orchard â indeed was significant and that it provided evidence that the subject of the worldâs first manhunt did not just vanish into the wind after plundering a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims home from a pilgrimage to Mecca â he and his crew may have spent time in colonial New England spending their loot. Bailey found documents showing that the way the pirates hid out was by posing as slave traders, then a âlegitimateâ profession in Newport, Rhode Island.Kole's story rocketed to the top of the news cycle on the day it was published, getting more clicks than any other story on apnews.com. https://bit.ly/2Ov95UV
for breaking the exclusive news that the 42 migrant caravan members arrested during a protest at the Mexico/U.S. border had their charges dropped. https://bit.ly/2Ulvpyf
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 â and he wasnât 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.
When AP Australia correspondent Kristen Gelineau, Singapore photographer Maye-E Wong and New Delhi video journalist Rishabh Jain entered the sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh that are sheltering Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, they did not need to coax the women they found to talk.
Accounts of cruelty, violence and rape at the hands of Myanmar armed forces poured out of the survivors.
After only one week in the camps, Gelineau had interviewed 27 women and girls to gather evidence that Myanmarâs armed forces had carried out a pattern of sweeping, systematic rape across Myanmarâs Rakhine state. Joined by Wong and Jain during her second week in the camps, the team revisited several of the women Gelineau had interviewed to capture haunting photos and video. Gelineau and Wong then interviewed two more rape survivors, bringing to 29 the number of women struggling to survive in squalid conditions who were desperate to tell the world what had happened to them. The images of their tear-filled eyes, peering out over brightly colored headscarves, conveyed a depth of suffering almost impossible to describe.
For their searing account in words, photos and video, Gelineau, Wong and Jain have earned the Beat of the Week.
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.
for getting exclusive details and photos in the story of a young manâs murder of four other men â including that he had an accomplice and burned three out of four bodies. http://bit.ly/2u2cAVD
New York City police reporter Colleen Long was taking the elevator at police headquarters on a quiet Friday afternoon before the Fourth of July weekend when she overheard a couple of patrol officers suddenly talking with alarm. âOh my God,â one of them said. âSomethingâs going on at Bronx Lebanon Hospital. I think an active shooter.â
Long got off on the next stop and immediately called a source as she took the stairs down to her office in the second-floor press room, known as âthe shack.â By the time she got to the desk, she had enough information to call the New York City bureau with a barebones APNewsAlert: âNEW YORK (AP) â Police are responding to a report of shots fired inside a New York City hospital.â
So began a bureau-wide reporting effort on a story that would unfold in unusual detail, even in the long litany of American gun violence. For leading a team effort that put the AP out front and kept us there, Colleen Long wins the Best of the States Award and the $300 that goes with it for the second week in a row.
When The Associated Press last year started to look into the issue of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers, one finding was a leaked investigative report detailing how a group of 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers preyed upon young Haitian children in a sex ring that lasted for three years. Beyond that was another startling find: The U.N. accepted a Sri Lankan general who was accused of being a war criminal to lead the investigation of another rape in the Caribbean country.
APâs Katy Daigle traveled to Sri Lanka to score a rare, extended interview with Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias and question him about his role â and to press government and military officials on how they'd followed up on the allegations. In London, meanwhile, investigative reporter Paisley Dodds was tipped by sources to a State Department memo on the WikiLeaks site in which a former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka raised concerns that that countryâs military and government were complicit in war crimes during the 26-year civil war.
Their disclosures earn the Beat of the Week.
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.
Itâs one of the most important lessons of investigative journalism: One good story can lead to another. Donât give up after the first round. Keep digging.
Thatâs what Mitch Weiss of the national investigative team did after his explosive first story on the Word of Faith Fellowship. His follow-up story earns the Beat of the Week.
It took Weiss many months to persuade 43 former members of the Fellowship to open up â on the record and identified â with stories of adults and children being slapped, punched, choked and slammed to the floor in the name of the Lord. But getting so many of the reluctant ex-congregants to talk was only the start of his journalistic journey.
for an exclusive sit-down interview with novelist Michael Peterson the day before he entered a plea ending the 15-year murder case against him. http://bit.ly/2mqwLKe http://apne.ws/2m533K9
for putting AP ahead with word that former congressman Aaron Schock was being indicted for scheming to profit personally from his federal job. Among other charges, the indictment said Schock bought World Series tickets with campaign donations then resold them at a profit and claimed reimbursement for 150,000 miles that he didn't travel.
http://bit.ly/2fvFhng
Reporter Jeff Amy in Jackson, Mississippi, often combs through recent federal court decisions, upcoming cases and random filings. Every once in a while that produces a whopper of a story. The story of Jessica Jauch, who was jailed for 96 days in Mississippi without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail, was the result of such legwork.
âOh, my God,â he thought, as he pored over court documents that laid out, in great detail how Jauch was charged with a felony based on a secretly recorded video and how when she finally got a hearing and prosecutors watched the video _ in which she committed no crime _ the case fell apart.
Joan Lowy, transportation reporter, Washington, D.C., and Emily Schmall, correspondent, Fort Worth, Texas, for scoring significant news beats after a hot air balloon caught fire, killing 16.
