for ensuring that AP received an advance copy of the prepared remarks by William Barr, President Donald Trumpâs nominee for attorney general, breaking the news that Barr would tell his confirmation hearing it is âvitally importantâ for the Russia investigation to reach its conclusion and that he believed the public should learn of its results. https://bit.ly/2S9cR5W
for the first international media interview with new Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh. Shtayyeh accused the United States of declaring âfinancial warâ on his people and said a purported American peace plan will be âborn dead,â a comment that prompted angry reaction from the White House. https://bit.ly/2VovBjB
for breaking news that Adele and her husband Simon Konecki have separated, getting the first statement from the singerâs rep about the split. https://bit.ly/2UCZGr9
The AP bulletin rocketed around the world just minutes after the release of the much-anticipated report by special counsel Robert Mueller:
WASHINGTON (AP) â Muellerâs report reveals Trump's efforts to seize control of Russia probe and force the special counselâs removal.
That set the tone for a day of dominant AP coverage in every format on the historic findings in the Mueller report.
The success was the result of planning and deep knowledge of the subject matter by APâs Russia team â Eric Tucker, Mike Balsamo, Chad Day and Mary Clare Jalonick â along with lightning-fast speed and precision execution by White House news editor Nancy Benac and the entire Washington bureau.
As soon as they were allowed to open the report, Tucker and Balsamo called the Washington bureau and kept two open lines to the newsroom, where they fed material Day and Jalonick, while Benac began crafting the story that hit the wire right after the report was posted online.
By then, the AP was off and running with outstanding all-formats coverage, including sharp handling of photos and live video. Our speed was so impressive that clients were able to get a complete set of critical and comprehensive edits by mid-afternoon. Our interactive had unheard-of play for a non-election story, while the Trump Investigation hub on APNews more than doubled its previous high pageviews. The standout coverage also ran on front pages of newspapers around the country.
âWhile we were sending bulletins saying that Trump had tried to stop the investigation, everyone else was still saying, âWe have the report, weâre reading it, weâll get back to you,ââ Executive Editor Sally Buzbee said.
For their efforts, Balsamo, Tucker, Day, Jalonick and Benac win APâs Best of the Week.
for documenting turmoil within the White House and the Department of Homeland Security as President Donald Trump grasps for ever-stronger steps to curb illegal immigration. https://bit.ly/2VuOsGI
For weeks, journalists in Washington had been chasing tips that special counsel Robert Muellerâs investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 race for the White House was winding down. Knowing that appetite for the story was huge, our Washington team created a comprehensive coverage plan for the day the report would be delivered to Attorney General William Barr.
Eric Tucker, Justice Department reporter, and Chad Day, Trump investigations reporter, kicked off the coverage with âMueller in Plain Sight,â a sweeping narrative of everything that had already been revealed by Mueller in his public indictments.
As speculation intensified, Tucker and law enforcement reporter Mike Balsamo alternated shifts at the Justice Department, while AP photographers and videojournalists staked out Mueller and Barr. Photographer Andrew Harnik scored with images of Mueller arriving at the Justice Department, the first image of Mueller by a news photographer in more than a year.
Word finally came on Friday, March 22 that Muellerâs work had ended. Within minutes of moving an alert, the AP sent a series of richly reported stories by the team that led APâs coverage for months: Tucker, Day, Balsamo and Congress reporter Mary Clare Jalonick.
And on Sunday morning AP scored another visual scoop when freelance photographer Cliff Owen learned that Mueller was at church. Owenâs photos of Mueller exiting St. Johnâs church ricocheted around the internet.
Later Sunday, when a Justice Department official handed reporters copies of Barrâs summary, Tucker calmly read the highlights over an open phone line to the bureau while Balsamo sent full quotes. APâs first alert, that Mueller had not exonerated Trump on obstruction of justice, moved a full 10 minutes before the Washington Post and five minutes before the New York Times.
The video team also provided unmatched live coverage from a wide range of locations in Washington, at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and in New York throughout the weekend.
For exceptional planning, teamwork and execution, Eric Tucker, Chad Day, Mike Balsamo, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Harnik and Cliff Owen win APâs Best of the Week award.
for breaking two completely unrelated Texas scoops: that the University of Texas had fired former star quarterback Vince Young from his part-time job as an ambassador and development officer for the school, and for reporting that after barely three months after Democrats showed signs of cracking Republican dominance in state elections, Gov. Greg Abbott used the power of his office to appoint GOP judges who had been rejected by voters to new positions on the bench.https://bit.ly/2J6ZNe3https://bit.ly/2TB5fe3
for breaking the news that after the firing of Director James Comey, top FBI officials developed a plan to protect evidence in the Russia investigation. https://bit.ly/2NcZtJa
âHow quickly can you and your boss get here?â
The curt text message to Andean News Director Joshua Goodman from Venezuelaâs normally evasive communications minister promised a tantalizing scoop. It set Goodman and Ian Phillips, vice president for international news, on an intercontinental dash to Caracas to secure embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduroâs first-ever interview with an English-language news agency.
Among the exclusives from the interview, Maduro revealed that his foreign minister had twice met secretly in New York with a Trump administration envoy. It came against a tense backdrop as the U.S. joined other Latin American nations in calling for the leaderâs ouster.
The unprecedented access came as the result of Goodmanâs years of source development with the Venezuelan government, including cultivating pro-government sources and making sure cabinet ministers saw that APâs coverage of the nation was fair and balanced.
The package was a dominating all-formats beat for the AP and a massive draw for customers, with video of the interview downloaded more than 840 by clients around the world. And in a surprise first, Venezuelan state TV also carried the 42-minute interview in its entirety in prime time.
For his masterful source development, resourcefulness and quick work to put the AP ahead, Goodman wins APâs Best of the Week award.
The world watched enthralled on Jan. 23 as little-known Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself president of the struggling South American nation and called on socialist President Nicolas Maduro to resign. More surprising still, the United States, Canada and a host of Latin American countries recognized Guaido almost immediately as the countryâs rightful leader.
The timing was clearly no coincidence, but what exactly had happened?
Andean News Director Josh Goodman, Canada Bureau Chief Rob Gillies and Washington newsman Luis Alonso shared first-rate source work to scoop everyone, revealing a coordinated behind-the-scenes push to back Guaido that read like a spy novel. For weeks, a coalition of Latin American governments had launched secret diplomatic efforts, including encrypted messages and a furtive trip by Guaido to Washington, Bogota and Brasilia to build a strategy around the baby-faced Assembly president.
So far, the AP is the only media outlet to have told this story, and it has been widely used inside and outside Venezuela. Even embattled President Maduro praised the AP scoop to supporters at a rally over the weekend.
For their resourceful and consequential news break on one of the top stories in the world, Goodman, Gillies and Alonso win APâs Best of the Week.
for using deep sourcing to report that a patient at the stateâs largest psychiatric hospital knocked a nurse to the floor, choked her and bit off part of her ear, the latest violent incident at the facility. https://bit.ly/2CBpf7L
New Delhi-based investigative reporter Tim Sullivan spent months looking into whispers that Indian nuns had endured sexual pressure by Catholic priests. What he found, after months of reporting into the closed-off world of Catholic convents, was a pattern of abuse that went back decades, ranging from drunken priests barging into nunsâ rooms to outright rape. He also found a culture of silence that had long kept these attacks hidden. Slowly, though, Sullivan found sisters willing to open up about their attacks, and others who could give perspective on why theyâd been kept secret for so long. Finally, he and New Delhi photographer Manish Swarup traveled to southern Indiaâs Catholic heartland to meet with nuns who had become pariahs in their community for defending a sister who accused a bishop of rape.
Sullivanâs powerful narrative attracted widespread attention. Accompanied by Swarupâs evocative photos, it was one of the APâs most-read stories for the week, with excellent reader engagement. AP clients specializing in Catholic affairs ran the story prominently.
The standout work by Sullivan and Swarup contributed to the weekâs remarkable body of work across the AP in covering abuse by clergy. For exposing long-held scandals in Indiaâs Catholic ministries, Sullivan and Swarup share APâs Best of the Week.
Getting a source to give AP a major scoop over competitors can take weeks or months of building credibility and trust. Sometimes that payoff takes years â as Austin, Texas, newsman Paul Weber discovered while breaking the news that former Obama Cabinet member Julian Castro was becoming the first Democrat in the 2020 field to launch an exploratory committee for president.
Weberâs relationship with Castro goes back nearly a decade. Weber moved to APâs San Antonio bureau in 2009, covering the 34-year-old mayor as a national political figure, including regular source meetings and face time with his family.
When Castro returned to Texas after two years as the nationâs housing secretary, Weber ran into him, stumping for other Democrats on the 2018 campaign trail. Months later Weber received a call from the number he had plugged into his phone eight years earlier: It was Castro calling to say he was âlikelyâ to run for president.
The APNewsBreak immediately trended as a top story on social media and put AP hours ahead of major competitors, including The New York Times, which cited AP and quoted from Weberâs exclusive all-formats interview.
For exceptional source development and for negotiating an AP exclusive, Weber wins this weekâs Best of the States.
When a source told APâs chief medical reporter Marilynn Marchione that a Chinese researcher had edited the DNA of several human embryos and implanted two into a woman, their conversation launched an aggressive but delicate reporting effort by AP journalists in the U.S. and China. That reporting led to the APâs exclusive coverage of one of the most important and controversial claims in medical and science history. It was nothing less than an attempt to alter the trajectory of human heredity.
Science writer Christina Larson, videographer Emily Wang, researcher Fu Ting and photographer Mark Schiefelbein set out to interview the researcher and his colleagues in Shenzhen and Beijing, while Marchione and videographer Kathy Young worked the story from the U.S.
He's claim raised a laundry list of concerns. After talking with current and former colleagues and outside scientists, it became clear that his claim, while unverifiable, was plausible. AP knew it would be worthwhile reporting the claim, because the claim itself would be major scientific news. And it was â AP's exclusive on He's claim of the worldâs first gene-edited babies made headlines worldwide.
The response from readers, customers and other scientists was immediate and intense. The inventors of the gene-editing technology He used condemned the claim. U.S. and Chinese universities that He was affiliated with launched investigations, and more than 100 Chinese scientists called for a ban on work of this kind in China.
APâs reporting was credited or linked to by at least 44 media outlets and generated numerous downloads. At more than half a million page views it was by far the most read story on APNews for the week.
For responsibly breaking a story in all formats of a major scientific claim while exploring the ethical quandaries that Heâs research has raised, Marchione, Larson, Wang, Young, Ting and Schiefelbein earn AP's Best of the Week.
for obtaining an Education Department document showing that student loan servicer Navient put borrowers in costly repayment plans without telling them about potentially less expensive options. The exclusive was picked up in several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and made the front page of the New York Daily News. Navientâs stock fell more than 10 percent after Kenâs story was published, forcing the CEO to issue a letter to shareholders. One analyst firm, ValuAct, downgraded the stock following the story. https://bit.ly/2KmOnQv
for combining to produce a riveting narrative that helped APâs audience understand life in war-torn Yemen, and breaking investigative ground on the United Statesâ ongoing drone war there, including revealing the number of civilians killed by drones this year.https://bit.ly/2Br8XfNhttps://bit.ly/2R2ZyjZ
for scoring an APNewsBreak on one of the most important details of how Olympic leaders in the United States are handling sexual abuse cases, finding that $2.2 million in key federal funds could not be used for the most pressing need of investigating any cases, with a backlog of more than 800 to be resolved. https://bit.ly/2TbqAqE
The idea was bold from its inception: Attempting to count dead and missing migrants worldwide.
After covering the outflow of refugees in the wake of the Islamic State's takeover in parts of Iraq last year, Paris enterprise writer Lori Hinnant noticed a lack of data on the migration. She set off on a mission to count the uncountable.
The yearlong effort to document lives that would otherwise go unnoticed proved extremely challenging, precisely because it was plowing such new ground. An AP team of more than a dozen people painstakingly compiled information that had never been put together before from international groups, forensic records, missing persons reports and death records, and went through data from thousands of interviews with migrants. The data came alive with individual stories of migrants, a challenge in itself.
The AP project found 56,800 dead and missing migrants since 2014, almost double the number currently put out by the United Nations, which focuses heavily on Europe and nearly excludes several other areas of the world. The report drew significant interest, despite the fact that it ran six days before the U.S. midterm elections.
For their ambitious project that established AP as a global authority on this issue, Hinnant, Istanbul visual journalist Bram Janssen and Cairo photographer Nariman El-Mofty share the Best of the Week award.
When an explosive device was found at the suburban New York property of liberal megadonor George Soros, it raised a few eyebrows with just two weeks to go until the midterm election. When a second device was found addressed to Hillary Clinton, the mail bombs targeting critics of President Trump became the dominant story in the country, political and otherwise, for the better part of a week.
The AP broke the news of the connection between the Soros and Clinton devices, making it clear something broader was afoot, the first in a series of scoops keying a sprawling, days-long effort across regions and formats.
Driving the coverage of the investigation into what became more than a dozen homemade bombs sent to prominent Democrats was the Washington law enforcement crew comprised of Colleen Long, Mike Balsamo, Michael Biesecker and Eric Tucker, and law enforcement writers Jim Mustian in New York and Curt Anderson in Miami.
Play across formats was overwhelming. NewsWhip tracked Fridayâs mainbar alone, on the suspect's arrest, getting more than 125,000 page views on apnews.com and the app. Among the more widely used stories by customers: a fast but deep profile of the bombing suspect, co-bylined by Washington reporters Michael Biesecker and Stephen Braun and relying heavily on reporting from Miami intern Ellis Rua.
For their beats highlighting the APâs broad, collaborative and competitive effort, Long, Tucker, Balsamo, Biesecker, Braun, Mustian, Anderson and Rua share this weekâs Best of the States prize.
When family separations began under President Donald Trumpâs âzero toleranceâ immigration policy, widespread rumors circulated that some separated children could end up being adopted by families in the United States â without their deported parents even being notified. California-based investigative reporters Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza set out to learn if this was true and eventually uncovered the case of 5-year-old Alexa Flores, exposing holes in the U.S. legal system that could allow deported mothers and fathers to lose their children.
Alexaâs story illustrates the fate that could await some of the hundreds of children who remain in federal custody after being separated from their parents at the border.
Burke and Mendoza sifted through hundreds of court records and dozens of interviews with immigrants, attorneys, and advocates in the U.S. and Central America. Teaming up with multiformat colleagues David Barraza and Rebecca Blackwell in El Salvador, Mike Householder and Paul Sancya in Michigan, and Mexico City-based Dario Lopez, they revealed how migrant children can become cloaked in the maze of state and federal courts, which are rarely in contact with each other.
For producing a complex, powerful story that spanned two countries in heartbreakingly human terms, Burke, Mendoza, Lopez, Blackwell, Sancya, Householder and Barraza win this weekâs Best of the Week.
