for pressing Pope Francis about the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops. Drawing on AP’s ground-breaking reporting in the past year, Winfield elicited the pope's first public acknowledgement of the problem, opening a new chapter in the Catholic Church’s sex abuse reckoning. https://bit.ly/2Go2yVz
Kantele Franko, reporter, Columbus, Ohio; Larry Lage, sports writer, Detroit; and Thomas Peipert, reporter, Denver, for nimble coordination across three regions to secure an all-formats interview with the first athlete – Olympic wrestler Andy Hrovat – to make public accusations of sexual abuse against now-deceased Dr. Robert Anderson of the University of Michigan.https://bit.ly/2HZ8m7Ghttps://bit.ly/2PwPH7j
Smart phone private messaging apps are great for keeping secrets. The apps delete messages almost immediately and do not allow them to be saved, copied or captured with a screenshot.
But what about use of the apps by government officials and elected representatives? State Government Team reporter Ryan Foley spotted a trend of public officials increasingly using such apps for official business. It’s a trend that alarms advocates for open government, who say it undermines state laws designed to ensure transparency and access to records.
Foley’s research was based in large part on use of a new legislative tracking tool called the Sunshine Hub that was developed by AP Data Team members Serdar Tumgoren and Seth Rasmussen. The tool allowed Foley to see whether bills addressing the trend were being introduced in state legislatures across the country. And indeed they were.
The resulting story won play on more than two dozen front pages and prompted several editorials, including one in The Columbus Dispatch warning that officials’ use of message-vanishing apps was the same as destroying public records.
For their efforts in exposing a potentially dangerous anti-transparency trend among government officials, and developing a unique tool to track it, Foley, Tumgoren and Rasmussen win the Best of the States award.
Sometimes accountability stories are hiding in plain sight, but getting to them requires first recognizing the potential and then doing a whole lot of digging. Virginia reporter Sarah Rankin did both of those things.
After seeing a one-sentence mention in a legal trade publication, Rankin began the hunt for a deeper story about a continuance privilege granted to lawyer-legislators, and how one Virginia lawmaker used the privilege to consistently delay court hearings.
Rankin plowed through records of cases that involved Virginia lawmaker Jeff Campbell, the defense attorney for a one-time NASCAR race driver accused of domestic violence. She found that Campbell had employed the continuance privilege at least 30 times over three years, more than double any other lawyer-legislator.
For seizing on the brief mention, then following up with determined reporting that revealed a potential for abuse by lawyer-lawmakers in Virginia and elsewhere, Rankin wins the week’s Best of the States award.
In the weeks before New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie left office, a measure quickly advanced through the Legislature that would give PSEG, the state’s largest utility, a $300 million bailout for its nuclear power plants.
That got the curiosity of statehouse reporter Michael Catalini, who started digging.
A records request turned up more than a dozen emails showing that the company had lobbied for the bailout and wrote in a clause itself to prevent the public release of financial information proving it needed the money.
The bill introduced in the Legislature included language to shield the company’s books from the public, but failed to get to Christie’s desk during December’s lame-duck session. It re-emerged after Democrat Phil Murphy took office.
Catalini’s story revealing the lobbying effort was published a day before a committee hearing on the bill. Lawmakers rewrote the measure after the story appeared to clarify that PSEG would be required to submit “any financial information” to the state utility regulator.
For holding the utility and state lawmakers accountable, Catalani receives this week's Best of the States award.
for breaking the news that someone had hacked the state of Pennsylvania’s online birth and death records, forcing a week-long shutdown of the system.https://bit.ly/2NuwQ9v
for reporting first that Michigan’s top education official decided to back away from issuing A-to-F letter grades for each public school in the state. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/lo…
for working with newspapers and broadcast outlets in Washington state to file a lawsuit over access to legislative records. http://bit.ly/2fkqC0h
for reporting exclusively that an energy company had failed to notify county emergency officials of a massive methane leak in northeastern Pennsylvania. http://bit.ly/2yopugf
for showing that the driver of a school bus that crashed into a commuter bus in Baltimore had a history of legal trouble and a spotty driving record. http://apne.ws/2fyeRxI
Who hasn’t glanced out the car window and seen another driver, head down, texting furiously? That was the genesis of a story by Boston-based reporter Denise Lavoie, who took an authoritative nationwide look at the texting-while-driving scourge and law enforcement’s losing battle to stop it.
Lavoie did spot checks with a handful of states around the country, as well as interviews with federal transportation officials and others. Her reporting – AP’s first major attempt to grasp the scope of the problem – found that police are fighting a losing battle despite adopting some pretty creative methods to catch serial texters in the act.
for reporting that the cost of California's project to modernize its prison medical records system has ballooned to nearly $400 million and is years behind schedule. http://abcn.ws/2hqvFZU
used the power of the AP to highlight an almost unfathomable fact – the federal government and many states have not publicly tracked coronavirus infections and deaths in individual nursing homes – and their story was followed very quickly by policy changes. A day after their story appeared, New York announced it would indeed release a list of individual nursing homes and how many deaths each one had. And less than a week later, the federal government announced it would begin the same process.https://bit.ly/2VRcP2Khttps://bit.ly/2yAhgaf
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he’d sent a letter leaning on Gunnison County, Colorado, to end an order expelling non-residents during the pandemic, AP’s Paul Weber immediately wondered: Why was the top law enforcement official in Texas picking a fight with a remote county two states away in the middle of the crisis? And did Paxton have donors there?
Weber and colleague Jake Bleiberg started combing campaign finance and property records, quickly finding that some of Paxton’s biggest donors have homes in the wealthy mountain resort town of Crested Butte, Colorado.
Persistent reporting and extensive public records work revealed that Paxton’s push against the Gunnison health order stood to benefit an exclusive group of Texans, including campaign donors who gave the attorney general a total of nearly $2 million. AP Texas members jumped on the story, using it in print and online.
For alertly connecting the dots between a puzzling press release and a conflict of interest in the attorney general's office, Weber and Bleiberg earn this week’s Best of the States award.
for breaking the news that National Weather Service meteorologists opted not to revise their blizzard forecasts for New York and other major cities, even as their computer models showed less snow than predicted. http://apne.ws/2mRZ8yD
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 using Maine’s open records law to reveal the names of more than 100 people pardoned by former Gov. Paul LePage. A 2017 law prohibited law enforcement agencies from releasing the names of pardoned individuals, but Villeneuve noted that the secretary of state’s office, which is custodian of the list, is not a law enforcement agency. Her request under the Freedom of Access Act led to the release of the names and an executive order by the current governor reversing the 2017 policy. https://bit.ly/2UhnxSa
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
saw the routine release of 72-year-old census data as an opportunity to deliver a textured portrait of 1950s America, reminding readers just how much the U.S. has changed.Schneider, AP’s primary census reporter, posted his story a day ahead of the data release, taking readers back to the first national count after World War II, the early years of the baby boom and a period when many American cities were hitting peak population levels. Schneider’s text was supplemented by a rich cross-section of images evoking a bygone era.Read more
As news of a racially motivated café shooting started trickling out shortly before midnight on Feb. 19, the AP team in Germany burst into action with an all-hands-on-desk effort that dominated coverage of this major story.
AP’s success included a huge win on live video coordinated by Kerstin Sopke, brisk filing of the breaking story by Geir Moulson and Frank Jordans, and Michael Probst’s photos from the scene that landed on the front pages of major publications.
Their effort was supplemented by a strong effort from other corners of the AP as journalists interviewed survivors and members of the immigrant community, wrote about the rise of far-right violence in Germany and followed the written trail left by the killer. Play for the story was phenomenal.
For their speed, smart news judgment and superior coordination that gave AP a massive lead on a big story as it broke, Probst, Moulson, Sopke and Jordans are AP’s Best of the Week winners.
