for breaking major news about an iconic all-male black college allowing transgender students for the first time. It was a notable shift for Atlantaâs Morehouse College and came as colleges around the country have been wrestling with LGBT questions. The scoop prompted local and national media to match the story. https://bit.ly/2Ur5vYP
for using data and good storytelling to demonstrate exactly who was most at risk of a lack of protection as the Supreme Court readies to decide a landmark case about equal protection for the LGBT community.https://bit.ly/2MJBtxrhttps://bit.ly/31Ja7gz
Chicago-based national writer Martha Irvine has always been interested in stories about the cityâs neighborhoods that buck stereotypes. So when she learned of a grassroots project to âreclaimâ abandoned housing on the cityâs South Side, Irvine began what she calls âa labor of love.â
She spent months getting to know the people of the Chicago Lawn neighborhood and their stories. Residents â ex-cons, immigrants, members of the urban working class â were not prepared to let their neighborhood succumb to the malaise that had engulfed other areas of the city, so they came together to make Chicago Lawn a desirable place to live.
Irvine did it all â not just writing this remarkable story, but shooting the photos and video. The package received heavy play and elicited rewarding feedback. One woman called the work âincredibly uplifting,â adding, âLoved the video, too. Inspiration station.â
For a compelling all-formats package that shed light on a Chicago neighborhoodâs success story and resonated with readers, Martha Irvine earns this weekâs Best of the States award.
landed an exclusive interview with civil rights figure Hazel Dukes on Rep. Shirley Chisholmâs 1972 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, a first for a Black woman. Dukes, who seconded Chisholmâs nomination, set the tone for Staffordâs multiformat piece, offering an exclusive window into how Chisholmâs legacy folded into the historic vice presidential nomination of Kamala Harris.The timing of the story and Staffordâs inclusion of other key, relevant voices helped set up APâs coverage of Harrisâ remarks to the Democratic convention and elevated the voices of Black women during the DNC. The piece was accompanied by âInspiring Women,â a video that Stafford narrated.https://bit.ly/2EwQTFlhttps://bit.ly/3hATPPC
took a deep look into a diversity issue in womenâs college basketball that has been mostly overlooked â of the 65 Power Five head coaches, only 13 are Black women.Walker, who is helping cover the tournament remotely, stepped away from the action on the court to highlight the low number of Black women in the top coaching jobs. She interviewed coaches and administrators to get answers as to why so few and what needs to happen for that to change. And she led off the story with a telling anecdote -- when Dawn Staley and Joni Taylor met up in the Southeastern Conference Championship, it was the first time in 41 years that teams led by Black women had faced off in a tournament championship. After the story was published, a Vanderbilt official summed up the responses to the article in a note to Teresa saying, âCrushed it!â https://bit.ly/3wfqMc3
When Ronald Greene died in 2019, Louisiana State Police troopers initially blamed the Black manâs 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 APâs Jim Mustian took up the story. Since he began reporting nine months ago, heâs 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 APâs 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 APâs Best of the Week award.
The 600,000th COVID-19 death in the U.S. presented a big challenge: How to bring fresh perspective to yet another milestone, just months after we crossed the 400,000 and 500,000 marks. The trio of medical writer Carla K. Johnson, data journalist Angel Kastanis and reporter Olga Rodriguez met the challenge and then some, delivering a data-driven Only on AP package that showed how the virus has exploited racial inequality as it cut a swath through the country.
Kastanis analyzed demographic data of all 600,000 deaths to show the uneven toll during the various phases of the pandemic, breaking down the disproportionate effect on the Black and Latino communities. Rodriguez reported on a family that led the story, while Johnson served as the lead writer, rounding out the piece with medical analysis, perspective and reporting. Contributions by APâs top stories team included an engaging interactive map of the U.S. showing the virus advancing geographically to 600,000 souls.
The package resonated with readers and customers on the AP News platform, where it was among the top stories, as well as on social media and on newspaper front pages around the country.
For a shining example of AP collaboration across teams, using sharp data analysis and on-the-ground reporting to reveal the pandemicâs impact on communities of color, the team of Johnson, Kastanis and Rodriguez receives this weekâs Best of the States award.
AP investigative reporter Mike Rezendesâ years of source work led him to a stunning discovery: a so-called help line that enabled a cover-up of sex abuse in the Mormon church community, including the case of a 5-year-old Arizona girl, molested by her father for seven years while church leaders were aware of the abuse.
Rezendes, video journalist Jessie Wardarski and photographer Dario Lopez met with victims and their families, earning their trust and telling the story in the victimsâ own voices. The resulting package, including illustrations by Peter Hamlin, was one of APâs most-viewed investigative projects of the year, protecting the victims even as it revealed a systemic effort to cover up horrific child sex abuse.
For deep sourcing and commitment to report a story with both impact and sensitivity, Mike Rezendes, Jessie Wardarski, Dario Lopez, Peter Hamlin and Randy Herschaft earn APâs Best of the Week â First Winner honors.
The Virginia governorâs medical school yearbook page was stunning. A photo in the 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook showed two people looking at the camera â one in blackface wearing a hat, bow tie and plaid pants; the other in white Klan robes.
Hours after a conservative news outlet first reported the racist photo late on a Friday afternoon, Gov. Ralph Northam apologized and acknowledged that he appeared in the photo. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus and several Democratic presidential candidates called for his resignation.
By the next day, however, he had a change of heart and Virginia statehouse correspondent Alan Suderman broke the news ahead of everyone else. Through a hard-won source he had cultivated during his five years at the statehouse, Suderman revealed that Northam did not believe he was in the photo and would not resign, hours before the governor made that decision public.
Then the scandal took a turn as sexual assault allegations were made against Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, a Democrat who is only the second African-American to win statewide office in the state. Suderman secured a denial from Fairfax after the second womanâs accusation.
But Suderman wasnât done. Again working his sources, he revealed that Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, the potential successor to Northam and Fairfax, had admitted that he wore blackface during a party when he was a 19-year-old student at the University of Virginia.
The stories drew tremendous play with readers and customers, with more than 1,000 website matches on several days and 103,000 social media interactions in one day.
For his deft source-building and strong reporting on this highly competitive series of stories, Alan Suderman wins the APâs Best of the Week award.
Following in the wake of the Divided America series, the AP wanted to glimpse the country â the multiple Americas, joyous, dreading and uncertain â that Donald Trump would lead as the 45th president. But how to do it in a way that went beyond traditional text and instead gave customers and readers a visually engaging look at the U.S. in the time of Trump?
The answer: "Postcards from Trump's America."
A specially-selected team of reporters, photographers and videojournalists joined up to report from four distinct corners of the nation, and their work provided a unique window into what Americans are thinking and feeling at this historic pivot point.
for smart planning, sharp thinking and close teamwork that melded to result in a comprehensive all-formats examination of Barack Obamaâs legacy on issues of race as the nation's first black president: https://apnews.com/29b24a7985a442d8b890261da99cad8...
What APâs Lori Hinnant knew, from a conversation with Beirut bureau chief Zeina Karam early this year, amounted to a fascinating mystery: A series of Syrian villages had been emptied and many of their people taken hostage by the Islamic State group, but now most appeared to be free. It was clear that ransoms were paid, but no one would talk about how it happened.
The hostages were more than 200 Assyrian Christians who were rescued through a fundraising effort among the vanishing peopleâs global diaspora that brought in millions of dollars. These were the broad outlines of the story that Hinnantâs months of reporting confirmed, but even better were the exclusive details she unearthed _ including IS sending one villager with a ransom note to his bishop, the church dinners and concerts held around the world for donations, and the decision, fraught with ethical qualms and legal risks, to pay a ransom.
Hinnantâs resulting âthriller,â as one admirer called it, is the Beat of the Week.
As Chicagoâs homicide rate has surged throughout the year, the police departmentâs tally of the previous monthâs body count has taken on an air of the routine. Even as the cityâs murder rate has passed new milestones, the figures have provided little more than a headline. And little insight into the causes and victims of the cityâs violence.
Chicago reporter Don Babwin set out to shed light on that violence in the wake of the announcement that August was the deadliest month in the city in two decades.
The down-at-the-heels industrial city of East Chicago, Indiana, made headlines around the world in August after the mayor ordered 1,000 people to get out of a 40-year-old public-housing complex because of lead contamination.
Many residents and observers expressed surprise: How could such a problem go overlooked for so many decades?
The Chicago bureauâs Sara Burnett and Jason Keyser teamed up for several weeks of intensive document and street reporting. What they found was as disturbing as the original news: The hazard shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone â because the housing complex had been built on the former site of a lead-products factory.
As nurse practitioners, Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill played a pivotal role in the lives of many people in rural Holmes County, Mississippi, which with 44 percent of its residents living in poverty ranks as the seventh-poorest county in America, according to the Census Bureau.
So when the two Roman Catholic nuns were found stabbed to death in the home they shared, the news devastated friends and families, as well as the many people who came to rely on the pair for critical, life-saving medical care.
Many media were slow to respond to the historic flooding in Louisiana this month, but not The Associated Press. AP journalists provided timely, perceptive and poignant spot and enterprise stories from the very first hours of the torrential rains.
Aggressive cross-format coverage by a staff focused on stories of real people were key to covering the disaster. In text, the reporters included New Orleans administrative correspondent Rebecca Santana; Baton Rouge correspondent Melinda Deslatte; and newsmen Mike Kunzelman in Baton Rouge and Kevin McGill in New Orleans. Freelance photographer Max Becherer and video journalists John Mone of Houston, and Josh Replogle of Miami rounded out AP's team on the ground.
for showing how a pair of Baptist churches in Georgia, one black and one white, have started trying to build a connection by confronting racism.
for the first interview with the Minnesota police chief after one of his officers shot and killed a black motorist during a traffic stop. http://apne.ws/2bgNOVN
Ben Finley, Mid-Atlantic/Norfolk correspondent, Joe Mandak, reporter, Pittsburgh, and Ben Nuckols, Mid-Atlantic/Washington reporter, for their reporting after John Hinckley ...
Ahead of the Olympics, an AP team in Rio wanted a close look at the city's slums, which have long been plagued with violence, to learn whether high-profile community policing programs are working in areas deemed `pacified.' Braving gunfire in what is considered a no-go area for reporters, AP produced up-close, all-formats coverage showing deadly violence continues to flare.
