for his two-day beat on news that a group led by Taiwanese-Canadian billionaire Joseph Tsai, the minority owner of the Brooklyn Nets, is close to a deal to buy a WNBA team, the New York Liberty. Tsai is a co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. https://bit.ly/2ARzguJ
Republicans in Wisconsin had pledged that no eligible voter would be disenfranchised when they passed a strict voter ID law in 2011. After it was used for the first time last year in a presidential election, a group of AP reporters sought to put that promise to the test.
Weeks of research and source work led them to a retired Milwaukee resident who had voted for years and brought to the polls her Social Security card, Medicare card and county-issued bus pass with photo ID; a Navy veteran whose Illinois driver's license was good enough to board a plane and open checking account; an 85-year-old man who had voted in the same small town for years; and a recent college graduate who went to the polls with her three forms of identification â her student ID, copies of her lease and utility bill, and her ID from her home state of Ohio.
In the end, all were turned away or had to cast provisional ballots that were never counted.
For exposing the practical effects of the ID law on Wisconsin citizens, the team of Cassidy, Moreno and Antlfinger wins this week's Best of the States award.
Itâs a story so dangerous that the journalists who covered it are still checking their temperatures regulary to ensure that theyâre not infected with one of the worldâs most lethal diseases. Yet APâs all-formats journalists helped tell intimate stories about the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history.
The team â Johannesburg Chief Photographer Jerome Delay, West Africa Bureau Chief Krista Larson, Istanbul video journalist Bram Janssen and Congo stringer Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro â had been planning since April to report on the outbreak in Congo, a journey complicated not only by risk of the disease but also the threat of rebel attacks. And their story took on even greater urgency when the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a world health emergency.
Readers, and editors, around the world took notice as the team produced a series of compelling stories from the epicenter of the outbreak.
For careful planning and execution of multiformat coverage that brought the frightening outbreak to a deeply personal level, Larson, Delay, Janssen and Kudra win APâs Best of the Week.
for using police and court records, and victim interviews to show that at least eight women and teenagers since 2012 contacted authorities to accuse a man of stalking or harassing them, but none of their complaints resulted in prison time for the man. The AP published its findings a day before a Utah judge sentenced the man to serve up to five years in prison. https://bit.ly/2YZMOxR
for using an open records request to reveal behind-the-scenes maneuvering by a Missouri lobbyist who promoted a measure that would help college students â like his son â who have been disciplined for sex-discrimination complaints. Emails obtained by Ballentine showed the lobbyist strategizing to make the ruling cover his sonâs situation, and pushing the idea that the real problem on campuses is not rape but women regretting casual sex. https://bit.ly/2VlNS22
analyzed all the arrests over the last two weeks in Washington and Minneapolis, concluding that there is little evidence of âantifaâ or âradical leftâ protest groups provoking violence as President Donald Trump claimed. The story, rich with detail, described who the real protesters were. Among them: a balloon artist, a cellist and a law student. But it was the heft of the reporting â acquiring and scouring hundreds of records in a limited amount of time â that made the anecdotal aspects of the story all the more credible. https://bit.ly/3f80JtW
With two major cases over partisan redistricting coming before the Supreme Court, how could the APâs coverage stand out?
Missouri-based reporter David Lieb of the state government team provided the answer, taking the results of last yearâs midterm election and applying a formula called the âefficiency gapâ to measure the potential effects of highly partisan map-making on races for the U.S. House and state legislatures. The efficiency gap, developed at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California and The University of Chicago, measures a partyâs advantage on a statewide basis.
His finding: Democrats could have done even better last November had it not been for boundaries created by Republicans during the last round of redistricting â otherwise known as âgerrymandering.â His analysis showed that Republicans won about 16 more U.S. House seats â and held on to as many as seven state legislative chambers â than would have been expected based on their share of the vote.
Lieb and Data Team editor Meghan Hoyer previewed the state-by-state findings for customers and other AP reporters so the data could be used for localizations. The resulting package landed the week before the Supreme Court arguments, and the play was spectacular, both online and print.
The package was complemented by video and photos from national enterprise reporter Allen Breed, based in Raleigh, who traveled to a historically black college in North Carolina, where Republicans had split the campus between two districts, diluting the votes of the left-leaning student body.
Breedâs full-length video ran with the spot stories surrounding the Supreme Court arguments and parts of it were folded into a video graphic produced by New York deputy director for digital graphics Darrell Allen and Minneapolis-based video graphics newsperson Heidi Morrow. It became a key part of the extensive social promotion plan created by Alina Hartounian, the Phoenix-based multimedia coordinator for the beat teams.
For producing a distinctive multimedia package that made the AP stand out on one of the most important and competitive political topics of the day, Lieb, Hoyer, Breed, Allen, Morrow and Hartounian win this weekâs Best of the States.
for breaking the news that Lori Loughlin was fired from the Hallmark Channel, where she was one of the most prominent stars, in the wake of her arrest on allegations that she paid bribes to secure her daughterâs admission to college. https://bit.ly/2TULwpj
Maria Danilova, newswoman, Washington, for securing the first wide-ranging sit-down interview with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in which she distanced herself from her earlier statement that historically black colleges and universities were pioneers of school choice. http://bit.ly/2uJFImy
for arranging to be with the New York Liberty as they tried out the first NBA Live video game with womenâs players. http://bit.ly/2wHoUbY http://es.pn/2w7NMdD
for using his longstanding position as one of the best-connected writers in womenâs basketball, obtaining exclusive notice that the WNBA and CBS had reached a deal to put the league on its sports cable channel, a huge victory for the struggling sports league. https://bit.ly/2W4QVIb
For more than a decade, Washington photo editor Jon Elswick has negotiated with the Department of Defense over coverage plans for the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush, while Houston photojournalist David Phillip fostered a relationship with the Bush family and their spokesman to secure APâs shooting positions for the eventual funeral events.
Those relationships were crucial to arranging and executing coverage, paving the way for more than two dozen staffers to parachute into Washington, Houston and College Station, Texas, where they produced outstanding photos in real time and for the history books.
Among the highlights: Photographer Morry Gash fired a remote-controlled camera that captured a stunning birdâs-eye view of the U.S. Capitol rotunda during visitation and services, and David Phillip negotiated to shoot inside the railroad car carrying the coffin as the funeral train passed through Texas. Phillip called it âthe most incredible event I have ever covered.â
The photo coverage was part of an impressive dayslong cross-format effort by scores of AP staff across the country and globe that included hours of live video and spot and breaking text, video, audio and graphics coverage that explored Bushâs life and presidency from every angle.
For exceptional planning and execution on one of the largest news events of the year, this weekâs Best of the States goes to the team of photo staff covering the Bush funeral.
for an only-on-AP story that used exclusive NCAA data and interviews to show that a new fair-catch rule intended to make college football safer was not cutting down on the number of kickoff returns as had been expected. https://bit.ly/2qkD965
for learning that the immigrant charged in the killing of college student Mollie Tibbetts was using an alias, John Budd. Foley also was the only reporter to witness federal agentsâ search of the farm where the suspect worked. https://bit.ly/2NqqziJ
Within hours of the news that the man charged with killing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts was a Mexican citizen believed to be in the United States illegally, Republican leaders from President Donald Trump to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds injected the case into the political debate, blaming lax immigration policies for allowing the man into the community.
Amid such comments, Iowa City correspondent Ryan J. Foley got a tip from two longtime Republican Party sources: The suspect lived on land partly owned by Nicole Schlinger, one of the partyâs most prolific national fundraisers, the sources said.
Foley was determined to discover whether that was true. He obtained property records showing Schlinger and her husband owned the farm trailer where Rivera had lived, and her husband was president of the farm. Foley then got confirmation from Schlinger, who had avoided his questions for days.
Further, Schlingerâs fundraising client list included anti-illegal-immigration hard-liners, including Reynolds, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and even the Stop Sanctuary Cities PAC.
The story was used extensively by Iowa newspapers and was a big online hit, with hundreds of postings and 40,000 Facebook interactions.
For scooping local and national competitors on a high-interest topic even as he reported on spot developments, Ryan Foley wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
for continually breaking news and keeping AP competitive during the hectic first week of NBA free agency. https://bit.ly/2JASG8W
The threat over her phone to Army wife Angela Ricketts was terrifying. âDear Angela!â it said. âBloody Valentineâs Day!â
âWe know everything about you, your husband and your children,â it continued, claiming that Islamic State militants had penetrated her computer. âWeâre much closer than you can even imagine.â
More than three years after Ricketts and four other military wives received this and other alarming messages, AP London-based cybersecurity reporter Raphael Satter unraveled the secret behind it all. Satter drew on a massive hit list of Russian hacking targets, focusing on a group of five women whose names were clustered together on the list. All reported having received death threats from a mysterious group calling itself CyberCaliphate back in 2015.
The threats were not from Middle Eastern terrorists at all, but hackers from the Russian group widely dubbed Fancy Bear â the same gang who later broke into the Democratic Partyâs emails and interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For revealing the latest wrinkle in the Russian hacking story, Satter earns the 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 â 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 playerâs 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 weekâs Best of the States prize.
for producing an Only on AP interview with Dwayne Wade while working at the Olympics in South Korea. Reynolds snagged Wade for an exclusive phone interview about his being traded to the Miami Heat shortly after learning of the impending trade at 3 a.m. Korea time. http://bit.ly/2C0jVum
for getting the beat that Madison Square Garden, the owner of the WNBAâs New York Liberty, had abandoned plans to sell the womenâs pro basketball team and would operate it for at least another season. http://bit.ly/2C1G2Av