for persistence that yielded a deeply reported story on Melania Trump’s White House renovations, including exclusive access for photos and video.https://bit.ly/2mCQAPYhttps://bit.ly/2n71AFuhttps://bit.ly/2l66Ngj
for an all-formats AP interview from Morocco with Ivanka Trump, a rare moment in which she addressed the impeachment inquiry at length, scoring blockbuster play for video, text and photos, including a sweep of the morning TV shows.https://bit.ly/32S5d17https://bit.ly/2pjmN0nhttps://bit.ly/2qewxtm
Building on his recent coverage of the collapse of the Super League, AP global soccer writer Rob Harris knew he needed to attend Sunday’s match between two teams that were part of the failed breakaway league — Manchester United and Liverpool — amid rising fan anger at the clubs.
Reporters were prevented from entering the stadium hours before the scheduled kickoff, with most waiting outside the entrance to Old Trafford. But Harris looped around the opposite side of the stadium to get closer to the expected protests.
What followed was a multiformat win. As the the crowd grew unruly, eventually breaking into the stadium and onto the field, lighting flares and lobbing bottles, Harris phoned in text and uploaded video from the melee, including the start of clashes between fans and police. He and a pair of stringers supplemented with photos. On an important day for Premier League coverage, Harris’ video was featured in major networks’ coverage, and AP’s text alert on the postponement of the game beat even Britain’s top agency.
For all-formats command of his beat under difficult circumstances, and significant wins against the competition, Harris earns AP’s Best of the Week honors.
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
for revealing inconsistencies and falsehoods in the story told by two women who said they had spent months at sea after their sailboat was damaged by a ferocious storm in the Pacific Ocean. https://yhoo.it/2ztUwXI
for her story showing how a group of now 5-year-old children, evacuated as newborns from a hospital flooded by Superstorm Sandy, retain mementos of the storm in their birthday celebrations, keepsake boxes, and even their names. https://apnews.com/7c68599a9f51430ba5d25d1326cbfed...
for getting an exclusive photo and interview with the lucky fan who managed to catch two home run balls in different cities during the National League Championship Series. http://bit.ly/2zcb5YX
The days leading up to Catalonia’s independence referendum pointed toward trouble on the day of the vote. The autonomous region in northeast Spain was pushing ahead with the election despite the country’s constitutional court ordering it to be stopped. In the weeks leading up to the vote, thousands took to the streets, demonstrating for and against independence. The election, set for Oct. 1, was sure to be a defining moment for the region and the country.
It also posed a challenge to those planning AP’s visual report: How best to capture the expected chaos? How to navigate its major city, Barcelona, which would be flooded with demonstrators and police? How to get photographers and video journalists in the right positions, knowing they might be stuck there for hours?
These decisions fell to Emilio Morenatti, AP’s chief photographer for Spain and Portugal. A longtime Barcelona resident, he anticipated those obstacles as he deployed AP’s staff and freelance photographers.
The result was some 200 photographs that captured the violence and passion of a remarkable moment in Spanish history. For planning creatively, making smart in-the-moment decisions and risking personal safety, Morenatti and his team of photographers win this week’s Beat of the Week.
While books and movies have shed light on the world of big-time amateur basketball, no one has published stories along the way – until now. With the first story in a series, Detroit sportswriter Larry Lage and others in a team from Sports established AP as the authority on news about Emoni Bates, a 13-year-old who stands at 6-foot-7, just started the eighth grade and is primed to be the biggest basketball prospect in the United States. The goal is to understand the high-pressure world of college basketball recruiting by following a single promising player’s path.
Lage, hybrid video journalist Mike Householder and photographer Paul Sancya of Detroit reported with the specific intent of presenting the stories in multiple ways, then worked with Chicago sports writer Jim Litke and east regional sports editor Oskar Garcia to craft the hub presentation of the text, photos, video and audio.
For their strong, revealing work, Lage, Householder, Sancya and Litke share this week’s Best of the States prize.
for capturing the folksy charm of 80-year-old municipal court judge Frank Caprio, whose compassion and humor have gained him celebrity status and endeared him to millions of people around the globe. http://bit.ly/2iteESO
Janie McCauley, sports writer, San Francisco, for an exclusive interview with major league home run king Barry Bonds, in which he opened up for the first time about his unceremonious exit from baseball. http://apne.ws/u5o9rVI
for checking up on Hasbro’s claim that it would introduce a Rey character to its “Star Wars” Monopoly game. Her reporting appears to have prompted Hasbro to finally make the Rey figurine available in U.S. stores. http://abcn.ws/2u5bdE1
The approach to Vatican Correspondent Nicole Winfield came from a member of a task force that had investigated care at Italy’s foremost pediatric facility, known as “the pope’s hospital.” The contact feared that serious concerns raised by the task force hadn’t been addressed two years later.
That tip, in late 2015, set the AP on a 20-month investigation of the Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus) Pediatric Hospital. Winfield teamed up with London-based Medical Writer Maria Cheng to reveal a dark chapter in the facility's history. They found that children sometimes paid the price as administrators tried to make the money-losing enterprise turn a profit, and Vatican officials took pains to keep the concerns quiet.
Their work earns the Beat of the Week.
for an exclusive interview with the last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster ahead of the 80th anniversary of the tragedy. http://apne.ws/2qUeszf
Baton Rouge-based reporter Michael Kunzelman was reporting on the police killing of a black man outside a convenience store last summer when a source called to encourage him to look into a case in front of a federal judge that had been mysteriously reassigned. It wasn’t the easiest time to be chasing down tips: the Alton Sterling shooting was swiftly followed by the killings of three law enforcement officials and then catastrophic flooding in Louisiana’s capital.
But Kunzelman didn’t forget about it.
When he was free, he began an investigation into the performance of U.S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi, work that would take months and aggressive use of public records. It culminated with the discovery last week she’d been ordered to seek treatment for alcoholism so severe that a colleague believed she couldn’t take care of herself. For his work Kunzelman wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for obtaining documents detailing New York state's $3 million settlement with the family of a developmentally disabled boy who was repeatedly molested in a state group home, including the attacker's affidavit saying supervision was so lax "it was a predator's dream." http://abcn.ws/2lm7lIW
When New Orleans staff photographer Gerald Herbert heard reports of a tornado touchdown 50 miles away, outside of New Orleans, he jumped into his truck and headed out of town to get a head start on coverage of the damage. Within minutes he changed direction when another twister touched down inside New Orleans itself.
Over the next few hours, Herbert was a one man journalism machine, filing to photos, video, text, radio and even securing dramatic UGC. Herbert wins this week’s $300 Best of the States award.
All week, AP Baseball Writer Ron Blum knew that a new labor contract between Major League Baseball and its players was close. Each day, he stayed on the phone, talking to both sides, figuring out how far apart they were. Wednesday night, they were close. Then, the call came: They had a deal. “You’re the only person we trust to get it right,” the source told Blum about why he got the story.
Over the next few hours, Blum got more. The terms of the deal began to emerge. New players would not be able to use smokeless tobacco. The league that won the All-Star Game would no longer get home-field advantage in the World Series.
For those scoops — and more — Blum earns the Beat of the Week.
for getting the raw FBI crime data to prove wrong the Maine governor’s allegation that blacks and Hispanics account for "90-plus percent" of heroin trafficking arrests in his state. http://nyti.ms/2cnuBG2
The scene, presented in the most vivid close-up, shows a paramedic frantically pushing an IV full of an opioid blocker into the vein of a woman turning blue and barely breathing. Then the radio squawks: Two more overdoses just reported. Where will Claire Galofaro’s riveting narrative go from here?
“The woman’s eyes blinked open” she writes next. Then: “Red lights on the phone at the 911 dispatch center flashed faster and faster until all 16 lines were screaming. They called from the dining room of a rickety house, the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, the bathroom of a gas station. `People are dying everywhere,’ one caller said.”
