for showing that a third of Floridaâs schools were struggling to follow a new state law that requires all public schools to have a police officer, armed security guard or armed staff member on campus whenever open. https://bit.ly/2MvPn8r
for an inside look at how Illinois high school officials and police confronted an honor-roll student about recording and sharing sexual images in the hours before he took his own life. http://wapo.st/2hjtNm0
for his interview with the new head of Australiaâs Transport Safety Bureau, in which the official revealed that the team searching for the missing Malaysian airline is making plans for a new search. http://bit.ly/2bFlsqD
for her detailed, on-the-record account of bullying and a death threat faced by a 12-year-old girl inside her middle school. https://bit.ly/2IL0JQW
Charlie Shebes had too much anxiety to sleep the night before the first day of his junior year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, the Parkland, Florida, school where 17 people were shot to death in February.
But Charlie was willing to share his morning routine with AP thanks to the relationship video journalist Josh Replogle had cultivated with students, starting nearly six months earlier. Replogle and his Miami colleague, photographer Wilfredo Lee, were there as Shebes rubbed his eyes, hugged his mother goodbye and brooded in the car before he skateboarded to class.
The short but poignant photo essay, along with text and an accompanying video piece, had an emotional impact, and the package received prominent play in Florida outlets, as well as nationally and even on some websites overseas.
For developing a compelling package from the unique perspective of a student returning to the scene of one the country's worst school shootings, Josh Replogle and Wilfredo Lee win this week's Best of the States award.
put AP ahead of the competition, responding immediately to first word that a driver had plowed his vehicle into a visiting school group in a popular capital shopping district. One teacher was killed, others were seriously injured.Berlin photographer Sohn was among the first at the scene, reporting for all formats including exclusive photos and live video, while Frankfurt photographer Michael Probst jumped in to handle editing duties, quickly relaying images from Sohnâs camera onto the AP wire. The visuals were heavily used by online media and TV clients, among others.Read more
reported exclusively that the worldâs three largest computer makers have told school districts nationwide that they have a shortage of nearly 5 million laptops â in some cases exacerbated by Trump administration sanctions on Chinese suppliers â just as many districts move to online learning during the pandemic. AP bureaus across the country contributed by reaching out to some of the largest school districts in 15 states to assess the scope of the problem. https://bit.ly/3lkhPJb
The tears, grief and tension of President Donald Trumpâs listening session with shooting victims and families after the Florida high school massacre were profound. Washington photographer Carolyn Kasterâs job was to capture the compelling event in images. Thatâs no easy task at the White House, where events are tightly managed and photographersâ movements are highly restricted.
But Kaster, working with photo editor Jon Elswick, overcame these obstacles and delivered an image of a hand-written note held by the president that quickly went viral and became one of the most talked-about stories of the day. The image wins Kaster and Elswick the Beat of the Week.
set out to document ways students with disabilities are excluded from the classroom â and from learning. Their reporting led to advocates who described working with families whose children were essentially kept out of school, with none of the records that come with formal suspensions. The families claimed their schools couldnât or wouldnât accommodate their studentsâ disabilities â a violation of federal law â and said the practice had gotten worse during the pandemic.Ma, race and ethnicity reporter in Washington, partnered with Kolodner, of the nonprofit Hechinger Report, who had been pursuing the same topic. Together, they interviewed 20 families in 10 states, and a top Department of Education official. Read more
On the sparsely populated fringe of the Navajo Nation, AP Report for America journalist Cedar Attanasio saw a storytelling opportunity: the bus system used by the Cuba, New Mexico, school district to solve distance-learning challenges for some of the countryâs most isolated, vulnerable students during the pandemic.
Reporting for text, photos and video, Attanasio rode one of the school buses used to transport meals, assignments and counselors to remote students, a number of whom do not have electricity, let alone internet. When the bus driver was forced to quarantine, Attanasio took to his car, chasing buses on their routes and interviewing students and their families.
For delivering an insightful multiformat package that reveals the pandemicâs impact on education in a disadvantaged community — prompting one reader to donate $1000 to the school board — Attanasio earns this weekâs Best of the States award.
overcame countless obstacles to provide on-the-ground coverage from a remote area of northwest Nigeria after the abduction of 300 students from a school in Katsina state. With perseverance, stamina and resourcefulness, the pair delivered content for a series of powerful stories in all formats, including live video coverage of the eventual release of the students.The pair had been covering Lagos Fashion Week when news of the mass abduction broke. After arranging with local stringers for APâs first images from the school in Kankara village, Oyekanmi and Alamba flew north, then drove for hours over single-lane roads, dodging trucks and potholes, and talking their way through security checkpoints to reach Kankara, a town now in shock. After making images â captured with difficulty among a populace cowed by fear â more hours of travel followed to reach a safe town where they could file photos and video, and get some sleep.That work pattern repeated over the coming days: six or more hours on the road, then filing late into the night with visuals and reporting that brought detail and color to text stories.When they learned that the release of the boys had finally been secured, Oyekanmi and Alamba rushed to the state capital, staying up all night to wait for the studentsâ arrival. When the freed boys finally did arrive the next morning, Oyekanmi was ready with LiveU gear, streaming exclusive live coverage of their return, while Alamba filed first photos via Whatsapp. Both formats scored heavy usage by AP global clients.https://bit.ly/3rkaQmxhttps://bit.ly/2WFlKozhttps://bit.ly/2KwM9CDhttps://bit.ly/38uEQTXhttps://bit.ly/3nFUpP3
A true multiformat team of AP journalists produced this Only on AP piece by tracking down data on child abuse from every state to reveal a worrying trend: Reports of abuse are down while signs of severity are up. The team complemented that dogged data work and hard news with the tragic story of one girl who fell through the cracks during the pandemic.
Acting on information sourced by video journalist Manuel Valdes, Seattle reporter Sally Ho coordinated the 50-state data survey and an ambitious analysis with data journalist Camille Fassett. Ho also read through hundreds of child abuse reports to find the case of 9-year-old Ava Lerario, killed by her father in a small Pennsylvania town. Ho worked with Philadelphia photojournalists Matt Rourke and Matt Slocum, and New York video journalist David Martin, to tell the story of about how the system failed Ava.
The teamâs deeply reported package drew remarkably high reader engagement, and many news outlets localized the work using APâs data distribution.
For exposing another disturbing inequality stemming from the pandemic, Ho and colleagues Valdes, Fassett, Rourke, Slocum and Martin share this weekâs Best of the States award.
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 â Olympic wrestler Andy Hrovat â 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
California's Bay Area is full of extremes: poverty and wealth; homelessness and opulence; high-end industry and the service workers who support it. Those extremes matter when it comes to weathering the shutdown in response to the coronavirus.
Jocelyn Gecker and Olga Rodriguez set out to show how that divide plays out, telling the stories of Rebecca Biernat, a San Francisco attorney, and Sonia Bautista, a hotel worker, and their families. With photographer Jeff Chiu they developed an intimate portrait of the two families â what they have in common and the differences in how they are adjusting to the shutdown.
For doggedly seeking out the right subjects, overcoming distancing restrictions and expertly weaving together two tales to tell a deeper story about inequality amid turmoil, Gecker, Rodriguez and Chiu earn this weekâs Best of the States award.
Eugene Garcia, just two weeks into his job as the APâs newest full-time video journalist, and photographer Jae Hong joined forces to tell the deeply touching and heartbreaking story of often unseen and unsung heroes of the pandemic — the clergy.
The pair approached the story with sensitivity and care, maintaining distance to give the families, patients and chaplains space, but close enough to bring the story to life even as their subjects drew their last breaths. The package, complemented by John Rogersâ moving text, shed light on exhausted and emotionally drained chaplains working in situations they had never experienced before. As one put it, âWe werenât trained for this.â
For an arresting package that explores the compassionate yet crushing work of front-line chaplains, Garcia, Hong and Rogers earn this weekâs Best of the States award.
worked sources on Staffordâs newly expanded beat to land an exclusive on the launch of a climate justice campaign.The effort by the group Donors of Color Network would shift millions in funding toward environmental and justice groups led by Black Americans, other people of color and Indigenous people and came on the heels of President Joe Biden pledging to make environmental justice central to the fight against climate change. Stafford, AP investigative race writer, brought the story to life by taking readers on a tour of neighborhoods in Detroitâs 48217 ZIP code, where residents live against the backdrop of heavy industrial sites that have long been a major concern in the nationâs largest Black-majority city. Baltimore-based photographer Julio Cortezâs photos of Donors of Color co-founder Ashindi Maxton, the storyâs lead character, rounded out the package. https://bit.ly/3d4zfaP
When the U.S.-Mexico border became a major front-page story again in recent weeks, the AP set out to tell the story of newly arriving Central American children and families in trademark AP fashion: with compelling all-formats journalism and richly reported viewpoints from migrants to bring perspective to readers on the topic of immigration.
Photographers Julio Cortez and Dario Lopez-Mills, reporters Adriana GĂłmez LicĂłn and Elliot Spagat, and video journalists Eugene Garcia and John Mone answered the call and more, delivering a string of stories last week that amounted to a master class in how to cover the border.
Among the highlights were the story of a 7-year-old girl crossing the border without her parents in the middle of the night, the story of migrant families dumped by the Biden administration in a dangerous Mexican border town while other families in the same circumstance gained entry into the U.S., and in-flight coverage of a 5-year-old Honduran immigrant en route to Baltimore. The immersive multiformat work received tremendous play.
For bringing to life the human stories of those seeking entry to the United States, especially the sharp increase in the number of families and children in recent weeks and the struggles of border officials to cope, GĂłmez LicĂłn, Cortez, Mone, Spagat, Lopez and Garcia share APâs Best of the Week honors.
Earlier this year, states and cities across the country pleaded for a pandemic ârescueâ plan to avoid a fiscal cliff, and they got it: $350 billion from Washington for local and state governments. Five months later, AP State Government Team reporter David Lieb dug into the data, state by state, city by city. He found that states overall had spent just 2.5% of their initial allotment while large cities spent 8.5% â not such an emergency after all.
It was a dramatic finding from an ongoing series of accountability stories led by APâs state government and data teams tracking hundreds of billions of dollars in pandemic aid.
As Lieb gathered and analyzed the reports, data journalist Camille Fassett prepared the information for wider distribution to customers who used it for their own localized reporting.
Play for the story was outstanding. It landed on the front pages of dozens of APâs biggest customers, online and print, and drew readership on AP News. For distinctive accountability journalism that delivered on both the national and local level, Lieb and Fassett earn APâs Best of Week â First Winner.
marked the anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. â where 17 people were killed, allegedly by a mentally disturbed man â with smart accountability journalism about a key Florida âred flagâ bill passed in the massacreâs wake.
Working over several months to get county-by-county breakdowns that no other outlet had, Spencer found that the law had been used to get weapons away from people deemed dangerous no less than 3,500 times since the Parkland shooting. Even so, his analysis showed the law is applied inconsistently, with some counties and cities using it rarely and others not at all.
The story was a strong look at how red flag laws â now passed in nearly a dozen states â are playing out on the ground, and it drew widespread attention and engagement. https://bit.ly/2P7Zws2
As sweeping restrictions and lockdown measures rolled out across the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, APâs team of staff and freelancers in Italy set an example for how to produce compelling and competitive journalism in all formats despite major challenges affecting them both professionally and personally, including the very real risk of being placed in self-quarantine for covering stories in risk zones.
Three weeks into the Italian outbreak, AP produced some of the strongest coverage yet including multiple exclusives and beats across formats. That work included: How the northern town of Codogno greatly reduced the spread of the virus, a first-person account of the lockdownâs impact on families, overwhelmed doctors drawing parallels to war-time triage, rioting at Italian prisons, residents showing solidarity from their balconies, and more.
APâs coverage throughout the crisis in Italy has consistently won heavy play online and in print.
For resourceful, dedicated and inspired journalism under unusually demanding circumstances, the Rome and Milan bureaus receive APâs Best of the Week award.
