for gaining unprecedented access to a meeting at Washington stateâs troubled Western State Hospital where staff expressed safety concerns as nurses and others are assaulted by patients and inmates with severe mental issues. https://bit.ly/2CqIOjE
The passing reference in a draft statement on an unrelated topic would have been easy miss. But Billings, Montana, correspondent Matthew Brown instantly recognized its significance â the U.S. was planning to lift protections for gray wolves, an action that would reignite the emotional debate over the predatorsâ resurgence.
Brown was reporting on sage grouse when he came across the draft Interior Department press release. It mentioned remarks that Acting Secretary David Bernhardt planned to make the next day at a wildlife conference in Denver: Gray wolves had recovered across the Lower 48 states.
Brown recognized the implication of that one sentence, and teamed up with fellow environmental beat team writer John Flesher of Traverse City, Michigan, to begin a race against the clock. Brown and Flesher scrambled to break the news before Bernhardt took the stage the next morning at the closed-press wildlife conference. Finally a source confirmed: Protections for wolves were again in the agencyâs crosshairs.
The APNewsAlert moved at 8:45 a.m., a full 15 minutes before Bernhardt was scheduled to speak. Other news outlets were forced to follow in APâs wake, posting their own stories that relied on a statement put out by Interior.
For seizing on a stray reference and reporting it out into a significant APNewsBreak on wolves, Brown and Flesher win this weekâs Best of the States.
For years, the federal government has denied widely sharing its terrorist watchlist with the private sector. But American Muslims have long had suspicions to the contrary, as those mistakenly placed on the list faced everyday difficulties ranging from making electronic bank transfers to boarding airplanes.
Source building and careful document review by Northern Virginia correspondent Matthew Barakat finally revealed that the federal government shares its terrorist watchlist with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities. The governmentâs acknowledgement of the practice, buried in a civil lawsuit, was significant because officials have repeatedly denied that the list was given to private groups. Barakatâs sources and his thorough coverage of the 2-year-old case had him ready to jump on the filing as soon as it became public.
His APNewsBreak on Feb. 19 earned wide attention, including hundreds of members using the story. Others scrambled to catch up, with The Washington Post crediting AP for breaking the story when it ran its own version in the paper.
Over the next two days Barakat was also first to report on a call for a congressional probe, and he was the only reporter in court when a federal judge berated government lawyers, ordering them to disclose the private sector entities to the lawsuitâs plaintiffs.
For his methodical document work and source-building that helped hold the federal government accountable, Barakat wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
The Au Pair cultural exchange program provides U.S. families with low-cost child care, but former au pairs said they were also asked to feed chickens, help families move and do gardening â all while working at below minimum wage. That prompted a judge to grant class-action status to 11 former au pairs last February and drew the attention of Denver breaking news staffer Colleen Slevin, who spent the next 11 months learning all about the world of au pairs and conducting interviews, such as one with a former au pair who said she felt like a slave.
Slevin also built a relationship with the attorneys for the au pairs and negotiated with them for exclusive notice when the $65.5 million settlement was filed last week.
The result was an APNewsBreak on the settlement that went unmatched for hours and received play around the world.
For her perseverance in building sources and tracking a story of international interest while covering breaking news over a three-state region, Slevin wins the weekâs Best of the States award.
The nationâs health isnât improving. In some key measures, itâs getting worse. How is that even possible in an era of genetic medicine and other advances? And how could the AP connect that story to our customersâ own neighborhoods?
AP medical writer Mike Stobbe and data journalist Nicky Forster started with those questions and delivered a winning package on why American life expectancy is getting shorter.
The package ran shortly after the release of the CDCâs annual mortality report which found that U.S. life expectancy had declined again. To find out what was behind the numbers, Stobbe returned to West Virginia, a place he declared the unhealthiest place in America 10 years ago. He connected with people trying to get healthier, witnessed the headwinds of the opioid crisis and explained how difficult it is to improve health en masse.
Forster, meanwhile, assembled an array of data that explained what was happening around the U.S. He matched longevity estimates for more than 65,000 neighborhoods with demographics, and found striking connections to income, race and education. He then built an interactive that allowed readers to see life expectancy in their own neighborhood and wrote a sidebar on the APâs findings.
For getting beyond the numbers for a richer understanding of why American lifespans are shrinking, and giving AP customers the data to localize their stories, Stobbe and Forster win the weekâs Best of the States award.
As the AP reported on the chaos and confusion surrounding the ever-changing list of missing people in the wake of California wildfire that killed at least 85 people, our reporters set out to try to track down more of those people and to show that they were findable, even though they continued to appear on the list of missing, and to show that hundreds were likely not really missing at all.
Dixie Singh, No. 158 on the list, was surprised to get a call from the AP, saying she was âvery much alive,â and all her friends and family knew it. San Francisco reporter Jocelyn Gecker tracked her down through a public records search by AP News and Information Center researcher Jennifer Farrar.
Meanwhile, Sacramento correspondent Kathleen Ronayne and Washington, D.C., reporter Juliet Linderman, who was in town for the week assisting on fire coverage, tracked down other stories of people who were findable â just not by the sheriffâs department.
The teamâs research and reporting laid out how easy it was to find some of the people and highlighted lapses in the sheriffâs record-keeping.
For their collaborative exclusive on a key lingering aspect of the deadly Camp Fire, the team of Gecker, Ronayne, Linderman and Farrar wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
As soon as the ground stopped violently shaking in Anchorage on the morning of Nov. 30, Anchorage newsman Dan Joling calmed his nerves and started reporting. Then, within minutes, he went from producing urgents to plotting out with Stephanie Mullen, the West regionâs deputy director of storytelling based in San Francisco, how AP would get the most compelling visuals at first light.
Already adept at capturing still photos, Joling would use a tool new to him, the live video streaming app Bambuser, to report on the damage from the two powerful back-to-back earthquakes centered just outside Alaskaâs biggest city.
Out in the field, Joling drove up to a vehicle stranded on a crumpled roadway, first using his iPhone to snap photos that he quickly sent to a photo editor. He then fired up the Bambuser app, a tool that he had been trained on exactly one month before.
The live footage he streamed was scooped up immediately by customers in the United States and Europe.
His quick thinking and improvisation put the AP far ahead of the competition and gave viewers and customers unmatched views of the quakesâ aftermath, earning him APâs Best of the Week honors.
When Tim Reiterman set out to tell the story of the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown mass murders and suicides, he didnât want to retread territory heâd covered with previous anniversary stories, or rely solely on his own harrowing experiences in the South American jungle.
Instead, Reiterman mainly focused on those he hadnât interviewed before, including the adopted black son of the Rev. Jim Jones. He also focused on those who grew up in the Peoples Temple, or joined as teenagers. These survivors, due to happenstance or their own efforts, were all away from the Jonestown community in Guyana when Jones ordered his followers to drink flavored poison.
The order that ended 900 lives came after a California congressman, temple defectors and journalists including Reiterman were ambushed on a nearby airstrip. The Nov. 18, 1978 attack killed U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, as well as Reitermanâs photojournalist colleague at the San Francisco Examiner, and three others. Reiterman was wounded in the attack, but went on to shoot photos of the bloody aftermath and write a detailed account two days later.
Reitermanâs approach to the 40th anniversary provided an unparalleled look into the massacre through the eyes of survivors who had to go on grieving close family members and forge new lives back in the United States. It also allowed Reiterman the opportunity to explain the tragedy for readers and viewers who might only know its broad outlines, if that. The all-formats package Reiterman wrote and helped coordinate â with assistance from staffers in all formats throughout the AP â wins this weekâs Best of the Week.
for leading four years of engrossing and moving coverage of the 100th anniversary of World War I, culminating in last weekâs centennial of the Nov. 11, 1918 armistice. They fanned out across what used to be the Western Front for stories and visuals that won play and resulted in the production of an AP book on the Great War, âWorld War I, an AP Centennial Commemorative Edition,â which was Amazonâs No. 1 new release in biographies of World War I for the week leading up to the centennial of the armistice.https://bit.ly/2K80mBlhttps://bit.ly/2DnwgZ9https://amzn.to/2Fno3Xz
Itâs a subject that has been largely ignored by the public and mainstream press in the U.S.: the plight of thousands of missing and murdered Native American women across the country.
Albuquerque reporter Mary Hudetz and national enterprise journalists Sharon Cohen and David Goldman teamed up to deliver an impressive all-formats package that illuminated these tragedies, engaging readers on one of the busiest news days in recent memory and earning praise from the industry.
For their efforts, Hudetz, Goldman and Cohen win this weekâs Best of the States award.
What happens when the state of Nevada announces it intends to use its own photographer to cover the parole hearing of O.J. Simpson, and exclude all others?
The Associated Press steps up, rallies the media and forces the state to backtrack. For their efforts to ensure news photo access to a high-profile story, the team of Stephanie Mullen, Ken Ritter and Tom Tait is awarded Beat of the Week.
San Francisco-based freelance photographer Noah Berger is one of the foremost wildfire photographers in California.
His experience helped put him in the right place to shoot stunning images as the Carr Fire swept into Redding and threatened to devour much of the Northern California city of 92,000. It also made AP the first major news outlet to have boots on the ground in the city, a competitive advantage that produced details other didnât have, and enabled managers to quickly get Sacramento reporter Jonathan J. Cooper headed to the scene.
Berger described the Carr Fire as one of the most intense fire fights he has ever witnessed. His dramatic images put the AP ahead of key competitors by more than a day.
Cooper's reporting included a key measurement of a wildfireâs destructive force: the number of homes lost. When authorities kept saying 65 structures had been destroyed, Cooper went back to two neighborhoods he had visited and counted all the homes burned to the ground. He found 60 in one and 66 in the other. APâs figure, and the context that the number would ultimately be much higher, quickly became the headline on the story.
A wildfire is among the toughest assignments for any photographer but Berger gave the AP a significant competitive advantage. Cooperâs savvy gave AP a figure others didnât have. For their work, they share this weekâs Best of the States award.
When a California judge chose the most lenient sentence for a Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus, the outrage made national headlines for weeks. Anger at the judge turned into a recall effort on the June 5 primary ballot and more widespread media coverage.
Despite the glare, Judge Aaron Persky has been mostly silent for nearly two years. San Francisco reporter Paul Elias has spent nearly that entire time asking for an interview, over and over.
Those efforts paid off with an exclusive, three-hour all formats interview at the judgeâs home. The judge said he had no regrets, even though the sentence may cost him his judgeship. The resulting story was featured prominently in local and national media.
For his persistence in getting AP a fascinating interview on a competitive story, Elias wins this week's Best of the States award.
for teaming on a story that showed a 99-year-old driver who drove his recreational vehicle the wrong way on a Florida highway, killing two, had had his driverâs license renewed in Michigan only weeks before. http://wapo.st/2F5sYc0
Allegations that a lawmaker had been trysting with a prostitute while the Utah Legislature was in session rocked the stateâs politics. The former lawmaker who had previously pushed for stricter laws cracking down on prostitution went into hiding. His attorney refused comment. The House speaker washed his hands of the scandal, and the prostitute was no longer talking, having sold the story to the tabloid site dailymail.com.
Political reporter Michelle Price needed another way into the story, so she started asking questions around the capitol.
She made a key discovery while looking at the screen grabs of the texts in the tabloid story: The dates lined up with the legislative session. She knew the lawmaker from southern Utah didnât commute to the Legislature and would be staying in hotels while in Salt Lake City.
She started asking tougher questions. Was taxpayer money used to reimburse the lawmaker for hotel rooms where he met the prostitute? Now she had the attention of officials in state government.
Finally came the APNewsBreak: Price exclusively reported that the lawmaker used taxpayer money to book at least two hotel rooms he is accused of using to meet with the prostitute.
For determination and a commitment to exploring all angles even when the main characters werenât talking, Price wins this weekâs Best of the States.
Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat has spent years covering the U.S.-Mexico border, building sources within the federal agencies that enforce the nationâs immigration laws and earning the respect of senior officials.
That source work paid off when Spagat scored an exclusive ride-along as federal agents executed what officials called the largest immigration action against an employer under Donald Trumpâs presidency: An early-morning sweep of nearly 100 7-Eleven stories that targeted the storesâ owners, rather than the workers.
One U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said the operation was âa harbinger of whatâs to comeâ for employers.
For his efforts to put AP ahead of the competition (some news organizations cited AP while their own reporters rushed to confirm the story), Spagat wins this weekâs Beat of the Week prize.
Late in the evening on Dec. 4, West Region photo editor Stephanie Mullen was monitoring a fire that broke out in Ventura County, about 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Mullen knew that if the notorious Santa Ana winds really picked up the flames could start burning homes.
She hired Northern California freelance photographer Noah Berger, an expert at shooting wildfires, and partnered him with Los Angeles-based staff photographer Jae Hong. Berger and Hong were in place as daylight broke and the fire surged into the city of Ventura, where it burned hundreds of homes. They rapidly shot and filed, allowing AP to deliver striking imagery before our competitors had even started their day.
The AP owned the coverage in those important early hours with impressive play globally.
Later that morning, Orange County-based photographer Chris Carlson worked his way through road closures to make images of horses being rescued and flames overwhelming homes in Los Angeles County. And as the week wore on, photographer Greg Bull snaked his way through roadblocks and heavy traffic to capture nighttime images of fires in San Diego County, then slept in his car and got haunting daybreak photos of the destruction.
For providing a photo package no competitor could rival, Hong, Carlson, Bull and Berger share this weekâs Best of the States prize.
It was just one of the many mysteries surrounding the Las Vegas concert shooting: How did the gunman, perched up on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort, fire off as many as 90 rounds onto thousands of concert-goers in just 10 seconds, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds?
Reporters Sadie Gurman and Mike Balsamo found the answer. Through sourcework, they learned that Stephen Paddock was able to carry out his assault in moments because he had used two âbump stocks,â devices that allow a semi-automatic rifle to repeatedly fire like a machine gun.
The scoop was part of an impressive week of coverage by staff in the Las Vegas bureau and across the AP that also included photographer John Locherâs dramatic images of police screaming for people to take cover as the gunman sprayed the crowd with bullets.
For their work in bringing critical details and images of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Gurman, Balsamo and Locher win this weekâs Beat of the Week prize.
for source building that led to her breaking the news that the developers of a disputed natural gas pipeline on the U.S. East Coast are considering a major expansion of the project. http://bit.ly/2kqtniy
Sarah Rankin and Steve Helber were covering a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia when chaos broke out. The marchers and counter protesters â Rankinâs words â ââthrew punches, screamed, set off smoke bombs. They hurled water bottles, balloons of paint, containers full of urine. They unleashed chemical sprays. Some waved Confederate flags. Others burned them.ââ
Rankin and Helber were the first of many AP colleagues to cover the story, and their initial work paid off in significant ways.
