Best of the Week — First Winner

Mother and child reunion is only a photo away; determined AP team is there to record it

On a midnight assignment at the U.S.-Mexico border in mid-May, the all-formats team of Greg Bull, Eugene Garcia and Adriana Gómez Licón reported on an 8-year-old Honduran migrant named Emely. Bull made a striking image as Emely stood alone and barefoot after crossing into Texas with strangers and turning herself into border agents.

Thanks to Bull’s photograph, just more than three weeks later another AP team — reporter Acacia Coronado, photographer Eric Gay and video journalist Angie Wang — were on hand when Emely hugged her mother for the first time in six years. The girl’s mother had seen Bull’s photo on television, setting her on a desperate mission to find Emely and setting in motion a determined AP effort to report on the reunion. 

The result was a vivid and emotional package with remarkably high reader engagement and outstanding customer use in all formats.

For spotlighting the stories that persist even when a nation’s attention to the U.S-Mexico border does not — and commitment and compassion in seeing it through — Coronado, Gay, Wang, Bull, Garcia and Gómez Licón earn AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

A photographer’s unique vision merges past and present for front-line nurses

With the U.S. slowly emerging from COVID-19, it might be easy to assume that the pandemic will soon be in the past, but for many, particularly health care workers, the trauma of what they experienced while caring for deathly sick patients will be with them for years to come.

To capture the idea that the past can be part of the present, Los Angeles photographer Jae Hong focused on intensive care nurses at a Southern California hospital who had taken care of extremely ill COVID patients and, despite all efforts, had lost many. That ward closed this spring, but the memories endure for these nurses.

Hong’s approach called for a photo technique not typically used in reporting the news: He made multiple exposure portraits of 10 of the nurses in the hospital, resulting in haunting images that show each nurse both in the photo, the present, and seemingly somewhere else in the past.

Accompanied by revealing interviews, the piece played widely in the U.S. and beyond, and attracted attention on social media.

For arresting, interpretive photography that evokes the lingering effects of the pandemic on these front-line medical workers, Hong earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Overdose deaths for Black American soar during pandemic

teamed up to make AP first to report on how the pandemic exacerbated the spread of opioid addiction among Black Americans. Their story focused on St. Louis, bringing to light a new consequence of the coronavirus and racial injustice, major themes of the past year, showing that the pandemic accelerated a trend that was already in the works: The spread of opioid addiction from mostly rural, white communities to more urban, Black neighborhoods. The reporting placed this trend squarely in a history of drug addiction in America that has long discriminated against Black people, and described how even today, the best drug abuse treatment is more accessible to white people than to Black people. As one doctor put it, the soaring death rate from drug addiction has become a pressing civil rights issue. The story was sensitively told in text, photos and video, with poignant details, including one mother fearing her son’s overdose death for so long that she paid for his funeral in monthly installments. The care taken in telling this story was rewarded with AP’s second-highest reader engagement metrics of the day.https://aplink.news/ak7https://aplink.video/ce5https://aplink.photos/kgr

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

With Lebanon in crisis, AP team sheds rare light on the elderly

explored the Lebanon’s often-neglected elderly population, particularly those who suffer from poverty amid the country’s dual crises of the pandemic and a sinking economy. Lebanon has the greatest number of elderly in the Middle East, but most of the population above the age of 65 has no retirement benefits or health care coverage, leaving them to fend for themselves.The Beirut team’s moving and informative all-formats story leads with an elderly couple who received a one-time $15,000 payout when the husband retired 20 years ago. They have since depended on charity to cover almost everything; the cash they get from charitable sources every month, once amounting to $400, is now barely worth $40 as Lebanon’s currency collapses.The story played widely and the AP team received messages from people around the world asking how they can help those featured in the story. Al-Jazeera ran a gallery of Hassan’s photos, while among those sharing the piece was a U.S. diplomat in the region who described it as “horrifying details from Lebanon’s Year Zero.”https://aplink.news/mqqhttps://aplink.video/z53

Best of the Week — First Winner

Years in the making, AP’s ‘AWOL Weapons’ investigation prompts immediate Pentagon reaction

Ten years ago, Kristin M. Hall noticed several cases in which U.S. troops stole military guns and sold them to the public. Hall, a military beat reporter at the time, then fired off the first of many Freedom of Information Act requests. The Army, however, refused to release any records and the story could easily have ended there, with Hall moving on to become a Nashville-based entertainment video journalist focused on country music. Yet, she kept at it.

Last week, Hall’s decade-long journey — and the work of a host of others on the global investigations, data and immersive storytelling teams — paid off in “AWOL Weapons,” a multilayered, visually rich project revealing that at least 1,900 military weapons — from handguns to rocket launchers — had been either lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some used in street violence in America.

Two days after publication, the Pentagon’s top general and the Army each said they would seek systematic fixes for the missing weapon problem, and through a spokesman, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called AP’s investigation “another example of the free press shining a light on the important subjects we need to get right.”

With deep reporting and a riveting digital presentation, the multistory package saw outstanding customer use and reader engagement.

For remarkable persistence that revealed a problem the military wanted to keep quiet, generating immediate prospects for reform, Hall receives special distinction alongside colleagues Justin Pritchard, James LaPorta, Justin Myers and Jeannie Ohm as winners of AP’s Best of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exceptional planning, execution of summit coverage yields big AP wins

collaborated on sweeping coverage of the Biden-Putin summit that outpaced all the competition.In advance of the summit, AP chased down all the moving parts, staying in touch with local officials and the U.S. mission, clarifying early on where the events would happen and establishing positions.Thanks to that preparation, the truly international video crew delivered outstanding live shots and features, including the summit venue at Parc de La Grange, security, arrivals and departures, reactions of residents and diplomats, protests and impressive shots of the city, among them a continuous live shot from the balcony of Geneva’s Ritz-Carlton from sunrise to sunset. AP offered more live signals and was faster than other outlets, offering more video edits and content than our main competitors.Meanwhile, text reporters from Washington and Moscow combined to put together smart enterprise and preview pieces, then quickly, deftly but firmly shifted to the main event, chronicling the day’s spot developments — a job that required throwing a few shoulders to get through the media scrum and past a Russian security guard for access to the opening photo op of the two leaders seated in a small study. AP managed to pose two questions to Putin that would dominate his post-summit news conference a few hours later: What would he do if Ukraine joined NATO? And why was he so afraid of opposition leader Alexei Navalny? At that, several members of Russian security pushed AP’s reporter from the room.The reporting team in Geneva, working closely with the Washington-based trip desk, filed a running stream of alerts and updates on spot developments, along with sidebars and takeaways on the upshot of the two leaders’ meeting.The photo team, drawing on Moscow, Washington and European staffers, was no less formidable. AP’s initial images of Putin and Biden together were the first to reach our clients, beating the opposition by almost two minutes. Remote photo editing in Washington ensured fast and seamless delivery of images, completing AP’s standout performance across all formats.https://aplink.news/89rhttps://aplink.video/vufhttps://aplink.video/u67

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Longtime beat work lands all-formats interview with Tavis Smiley

scored the first multiformat interview with Travis Smiley since the firing of the former PBS host in a #MeToo scandal.Elber had reached out periodically in the three years since Smiley was fired. Her persistence — and beat work — finally paid off. A week before Juneteenth, Smiley contacted Elber, who had interviewed the host earlier in his career as he broke ground as an African American host. Smiley told the AP television writer he opted to speak to her first because of her fair treatment of him in the past, including after PBS fired him. Elber asked Smiley directly about the allegations of inappropriate relationships with female subordinates; he offered no apology, maintaining they were consensual relationships. Elber had pushed for the interview to be on camera, with still portraits shot by Chris Pizzello, which resulted in an all-formats scoop that landed on the wire less than 24 hours after the interview, because Smiley intended to also speak to the Los Angeles Times. The Times ended up quoting from the AP story in a column on whether Smiley and other men accused of misconduct should be allowed to return to public platforms.https://aplink.news/wkihttps://aplink.video/mtihttps://aplink.video/c96

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team finds evidence of illegal migrant pushbacks by Greece

landed an all-formats interview with a Palestinian woman that hinted at a controversial tactic the Greek government has denied using: migrant pushbacks, the illegal summary deportations of migrants without giving them a chance to apply for asylum.With help from Svarnias, a reporter on the island of Samos, Athens video journalist Lefteris Pitarakis and photographer Petros Giannakouris, Becatoros unraveled the story of the Palestinian woman who said she and her three children arrived from Turkey several days earlier on a boat with other migrants, but she and the children became separated from the group and managed to apply for asylum. The other 28 members of the group ended up being found in a life raft sent back to sea.The reporting by Becatoros and Svarnias resulted in a thorough account of one of the most tangible examples yet of a systematic effort to deport migrants from Greece directly upon arrival. Greece vehemently denies the claims, but rights groups and migrants insist that Greece has been carrying out the practice.https://aplink.news/ic5https://aplink.video/ti0

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Expertise, preparation make coverage of SCOTUS ruling an ‘exclusive’

applied unmatched beat knowledge and meticulous preparation to score a major beat on the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling that left the entire Affordable Care Act intact. Sherman was so quick that he had a virtual exclusive on the closely watched case, with AP's mobile push alert moving a stunning 19 minutes ahead of major competition.The foundation of his success was Sherman’s encyclopedic knowledge of both the court and the case. He covered the original 2012 challenge to Obamacare and had a full understanding of the options in the current case. That expertise helped him anticipate that the Court was heading toward preserving the law, based on the tone and questions of the case’s November hearing. In the end, Sherman would not only predict the outcome, but according to Jessica Gresko, his highly respected partner in Supreme Court coverage, he even predicted who would write the majority opinion.But Sherman had thoroughly prepared for every possible ruling. In his own words: “We developed a range of possible outcomes based on the issues under consideration by the Court: standing, constitutionality of the penalty-free mandate, severability. We talked to lawyers and experts on both sides. We drafted and revised alerts and leads for each option: No standing, mandate constitutional, mandate unconstitutional but rest of law stands and mandate unconstitutional and rest of law falls.” In the lead-up to the ruling he also worked with White House news editor Nancy Benac and developed background material with health care reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar to quickly fill out the story regardless of outcome.It all paid off on Thursday with Sherman’s standout coverage putting AP far out front on the intensely competitive story.https://aplink.news/337https://aplink.video/3c7

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Secret panel investigating Louisiana State Police unit’s treatment of Black motorists

From the very beginning of Jim Mustian’s stellar reporting on the death of Black motorist Ronald Greene, he has been driven by two main questions: What really happened to Greene on the night of his 2019 arrest? And was this a pattern of how Louisiana state troopers treated Black motorists?

Mustian answered the first last month when he obtained body camera video showing troopers stunning, choking, punching and dragging the unarmed Greene as he apologized and begged for mercy. 

And he began answering the second this past week when he exclusively reported that the Louisiana State Police has convened a secret panel to investigate whether Troop F — the same unit involved in Greene’s arrest  — was systematically targeting other Black motorists. Mustian’s detailed reporting and solid sourcing turned up new cases and new video, and he landed the first-ever interview with one of the victims. 

His scoop scored with heavy play and strong engagement. For dogged reporting to keep the AP ahead on a searing case of racial injustice and its continuing fallout, Mustian earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Gaza team evacuates, responds with outstanding coverage as airstrike destroys AP’s building

Last Saturday afternoon, the AP’s staff in the Gaza Strip received an urgent call: They had less than an hour to evacuate the office before the Israeli military planned to destroy the entire building. Staff and freelancers scrambled to pack up whatever equipment and belongings they could carry, but even as they rushed to safety they continued reporting the news, including smartphone video of the evacuation and a live shot set up on a neighboring building. 

Moments later, an Israeli airstrike flattened the 12-story building that had served as a second home in one of the world’s most challenging war zones for the past 15 years. The AP team captured the dramatic scene for all formats, then, despite the stunning turn of events, quickly regrouped to continue their coverage of the ongoing conflict. 

The destruction of the building capped a difficult week in which Gaza came under intense Israeli aerial bombing, and thousands of rockets were launched into Israel.  AP’s staff on both sides of the conflict rose to the occasion, presenting fast, accurate stories, powerful photography, gripping video. 

For extreme dedication in the most difficult of circumstances, and their commitment to covering the conflict even at great personal risk, the Gaza team of Fares Akram, Najib Jobain, Rashed Rashid, Khalil Hamra, Hatem Moussa, Adel Hana, Mohammed Jahjouh and Wafaa Shurafa is the unanimous pick for Best of the Week honors.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Daring AP team crosses front lines to report on Ethiopia’s Tigray rebels and war’s civilian victims

Since the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia broke out seven months ago, news coverage has necessarily focused on those who fled the region. And AP journalists have delivered that coverage since November. But few journalists could reach areas under the control of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the party of Tigray’s now-fugitive leaders. Access was refused by the Ethiopian military. Until now.

AP’s Kampala, Uganda, correspondent Rodney Muhumuza and the Nairobi, Kenya-based team of Khaled Kazziha, Ben Curtis and Desmond Tiro made it through to the town of Hawzen with determination, teamwork and skill. 

Once there, and knowing the risks, the all-formats team limited themselves to less than an hour in the town, during which they reported exclusively on the TPLF fighters then occupying it. Hours after the journalists left, government troops shelled the town and recaptured it. The team later interviewed displaced victims of the conflict, including child amputees. The resulting multiformat story used the Hawzen as an example of the challenges facing Ethiopian authorities in the region. 

For smart, careful and courageous reporting to become the first outside journalists since the conflict started to interview fighters loyal to the TPLF, Muhumuza, Curtis, Kazziha and Tiro earn AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

Effects of California drought documented in compelling all-formats content and presentation

With California sinking deeper into drought as wildfire season approaches, AP set out to show the drought’s impact on vulnerable areas — beyond the orange glow of burning homes. Top freelance photographers Noah Berger and Josh Edelson teamed up with reporter Adam Beam, focusing on the six reservoirs with the lowest water levels. 

Both photographers are trained and equipped with drones; they delivered stunning visuals, including boat docks beached on dry land, charred hillside homes overlooking a lake reduced to puddle-like status and boat launches that don’t even reach the water’s edge. Meanwhile, Beam conducted interviews and visited the massive Lake Oroville reservoir, where the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century raged in 2018. 

The package was enhanced by digital storyteller Samantha Shotzbarger, who created a arresting presentation giving readers an immersive view of the evaporating reservoirs.   

For a revealing and forbidding look at the effects of California’s drought, the team of Berger, Edelson, Beam and Shotzbarger earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the States

Multiformat team delivers expansive AP coverage during centennial of Tulsa Race Massacre

With the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre months away, text and visual journalists from AP’s Race and Ethnicity, Central Region and Enterprise teams embarked on a plan to dig deeper into the story of the atrocity, well beyond just covering the centennial events.

The team started arriving in Tulsa weeks ahead of the anniversary to explore the city and meet descendants of massacre survivors, who opened up about the horrific event and how it continues to impact their families and the community. Among those they met was the family of Ernestine Alpha Gibbs, who survived the massacre and died 18 years ago at age 100.

Their efforts resulted in a comprehensive package of enterprise stories, from the lost wealth and racial inequality that Black Tulsans have endured, to the descendants of Black victims preparing to resume a search for mass graves, to an examination of how history books and law enforcement have depicted the massacre, and much more. 

The coverage was not without breaking news. In addition to a visit by President Joe Biden, AP learned that the weekend’s headline event was canceled because of a disagreement over payments to three survivors for their appearance at the event. 

For sweeping enterprise and spot coverage that raises awareness of this grim milestone in American race relations, this multiformat team earns AP’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team probes the depth of racism in U.S. military ranks

teamed up to reveal how the roots of racism still run deep in all branches of the U.S. military, and how the Defense Department has done little to determine the scope of extremism in the ranks and take steps to address it.Although military members are often reluctant to speak out, fearful of damage to their careers or other forms of retaliation, this joint effort by AP race and ethnicity and investigative journalists landed searing interviews with active and former troops in nearly every branch of the armed services. They told of being taunted by racial slurs, disrespected by colleagues and discouraged by superiors from openly embracing their cultures.Among their other findings: The military’s judicial system has no explicit category for hate crimes, and the Defense Department still has no way to track the number of troops ousted for extremist views. The Defense Department had three weeks to respond to detailed questions, but failed to do so by the deadline. Once the piece was published and officials saw the depth and breadth of the AP’s reporting the DOD came forward with a 3,000-word statement that was incorporated in the live story.https://bit.ly/3gcO9fdhttps://bit.ly/3gcRXx1

Best of the Week — First Winner

Unique AP visual investigation reveals Myanmar's junta using bodies to terrorize civilians

The video was startling: As a motorcycle carrying three men speeds down a city street in Myanmar, a soldier traveling in the back of a pickup truck opens fire. A man falls to the ground, mortally wounded, while the other two run away. 

Investigative reporters Robin McDowell and Margie Mason found that the video was one of many seeming to show the military firing at civilians indiscriminately in the wake of February’s coup. They also noticed that security forces appear to go out of their way to mutilate and drag bodies in the street, seemingly to terrorize the populace. The pair teamed up with the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, applying cutting-edge image analysis to thousands of social media posts and images online to reveal how the junta in Myanmar was using the bodies as tools of terror, according to human rights activists. 

With important contributions by Southeast Asia news director Kiko Rosario, and video by Manuel Valdes, the piece received more than 53,000 views on AP platforms.

For finding a way to analyze visual data from one of the world’s most secretive countries and presenting it in a rich and compelling multiformat narrative, McDowell, Mason, Rosario and Valdes earn AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP Exclusive: Investigative reporter obtains bodycam video of Ronald Greene’s deadly arrest

When Ronald Greene died in 2019, Louisiana State Police troopers initially blamed the Black man’s death on injuries from a crash at the end of a high-speed chase, then later said Greene became unresponsive in a struggle with troopers and died on his way to the hospital.

For the most part, that was all the public would know about the case, until AP’s Jim Mustian took up the story. Since he began reporting nine months ago, he’s broken a string of stories revealing there was more to the story. But Mustian always knew he needed to get his hands on one crucial piece of evidence: video.

This past week, Mustian did just that. In the most explosive break yet in the case, Mustian obtained body camera footage that showed Greene repeatedly apologizing and pleading for mercy as troopers jolted him with stun guns, put him in a choke hold, punched him and dragged him by his ankle shackles. The story led national newscasts and websites, and fronted newspapers across the country, with credit to AP’s reporting and the video, again and again.

This scoop was the work of one dogged investigative reporter who never stopped believing that the world should know what really happened to Ronald Greene. For that we honor Jim Mustian with AP’s Best of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Indians rich and poor face pandemic hardship on their own

revealed how failures of India’s government during the pandemic have left Indians across the country — from the poor to the rich — struggling virtually on their own. Despite a surge of coronavirus illness and death within the AP staff in India, the team put together an intimate story that showed how the pandemic impacted Indians from all walks of life.The story was born when, during a call, health and science reporter Ghosal noted that Indians across the social spectrum faced severe shortages of services and resources. Someone he knew was even asking where he could get wood for a funeral pyre. The team went out to look for people to tell the story, eventually narrowing the list to three families.Photographer Rahi went to the home of a woman who scavenged human hair in Bengaluru despite coronavirus concerns, and Ghosal provided photos from Delhi. Hussain reported details from family members whose stories were chronicled in the article, and enterprise correspondent Sullivan wove the piece together, capturing the poignancy and despair of the situation on the ground in India. From diplomats to sewer cleaners, no has been immune to the hardships wrought by the virus, as the medical system neared collapse and the government found itself unprepared. https://aplink.news/plz

Best of the States

Only on AP: A report of college rape, a Facebook admission years later and a woman’s fight for justice

“So I raped you.” 

That message on Facebook, years after Shannon Keeler left college, sent her back to the night as a freshman that changed her life. It also was the basis for her continued fight for justice, as well as this exclusive, powerful examination of campus sexual assault. AP’s Maryclaire Dale, a legal affairs reporter in Philadelphia, and video journalist Allen Breed interviewed Keeler and others, including a student who befriended Keeler on the night of the 2013 attack. That woman, Katayoun Amir-Aslani, told her story, too: She was raped later, by a different man.

The deeply reported all-formats package sheds light on often unreported college rapes, and the systemic obstacles students like Keeler face in their search for justice when they do report. The story drew major attention on AP News, where it was the most-read story for days. Other media rushed to match it, and Keeler has since told her story on network TV.

For sensitive and insightful reporting on a system that one of the victims describes as “broken,” Dale and Breed receive this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats team puts AP ahead on Spain-Morocco migrant crisis

alertly put AP out front of a burgeoning migration crisis on both sides of the Spain-Morocco border.While much of the world focused on the conflict in Gaza, Parra noticed something unusual on May 17: Dozens of migrants had entered Ceuta, Spain, that morning by swimming from Morocco. Usually, migrants seeking to enter Ceuta — in Spanish territory in North Africa — do so by climbing the border fence in small groups, evading the Moroccan security forces that keep would-be migrants away from the frontier. Parra filed a brief story and flagged it to other formats. Additional reporting confirmed something bigger was brewing, with the Moroccan authorities relaxing border security amid a diplomatic dispute. The all-formats team quickly responded, capturing riveting images of migrants swimming ashore by the thousands as Spain deployed troops and armored personnel carriers. Video coverage, both live and edited, showed migrants, including children, being rounded up on the beach and immediately returned to Morocco through a border gate by baton-wielding Spanish soldiers. There were also dramatic photos from the Moroccan side of the border, giving AP comprehensive coverage from both sides of the humanitarian crisis.Play for the story was tremendous. The video edits scored heavily and Armangue’s photos landed on news sites and in newspapers around the world, including in Spain, where the top papers used his photos on the front page two days in a row. His photo of a young migrant hugging a Red Cross volunteer on the beach went viral in social media and became perhaps the most iconic image of the crisis.https://aplink.news/mefhttps://aplink.news/vqihttps://aplink.photos/emahttps://aplink.video/j7whttps://aplink.video/zxuhttps://aplink.news/h8zhttps://aplink.photos/f8x