for a monthâs worth of thoughtful all-formats coverage marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and what was believed to be the largest LGBTQ celebration in history, culminating in a Pride parade that lasted 12 1/2 hours. https://www.apnews.com/Stonewallat50
Severe storms, extreme flooding and aging infrastructure present a rising peril throughout much of the U.S., but trying to assess the risks has been extremely difficult. The reason: The federal agency overseeing the nationâs dams has sealed off the most essential information about their condition and the potential threats to those living downstream.
Prying that information loose took the kind of dedicated, 50-state effort that the AP is uniquely positioned to pursue. Data journalist Michelle Minkoff and Northern New England correspondent Michael Casey, collaborating with state government team member David Lieb and a visual team led by video journalist Allen Breed â as well as a cast of AP state reporters, photographers and data journalists â produced a deeply reported and visually stunning package revealing the dangers of nearly 1,700 aging dams, from Hawaii to Massachusetts.
Some two years in the making, the package resulted in explosive play â more than 100,000 page views on AP News and more than 80 front pages.
For their exhaustive efforts to unlock critical public information and relay the findings in an engaging fashion, Minkoff, Casey, Lieb and Breed win this weekâs Best of the States award.
Coal-burning generating plants are closing in the U.S., and coal mines are shutting down amid worries of climate change and the new economies of renewable energy.
Against that backdrop, correspondents Felicia Fonseca and Susan Montoya Bryan traveled to Arizonaâs remote Navajo Generating Station to the tell the story of workers, their families, a community and the tribal nations who have depended on coal and are feeling the profound effects of the plantâs impending closure.
In their all-formats package, the pair let workers explain what they were losing, and how the local economy is taking a massive hit with millions of dollars of revenue no longer flowing to the Hopi and Navajo tribes.
For a comprehensive, compelling look at the impact of coalâs decline on a community and a culture, Fonseca and Montoya earn this weekâs Best of the States award.
for coordinating as a multi-format team to produce consistently outstanding images â photo and video â during nearly two weeks of violent protests by indigenous demonstrators who clashed with police and journalists, creating a risky, complicated environment for newsgathering.https://bit.ly/2BGxLQehttps://bit.ly/2MIjb0K
for reporting exclusively that a former Ethiopia Airlines chief engineer says the carrier delved into the maintenance records on a Boeing 737 Max jet a day after it crashed this year, part of what he says was a pattern of corruption that included fabricating records, signing off on shoddy repairs and even beating employees who got out of line. The jetâs crash in March killed all 157 people on board. https://bit.ly/2pupJqV
The New York video team, working with their counterparts at the BNC in Washington, provided live coverage of teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg's arrival to the United States, handily beating competitors with numerous live shots and edited pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGTj_3V8wQo
For source reporting and collaboration that enabled AP to break the story about the Trump administration's plan to open national park trails to motorized bikes. Sharp got a tip that the Interior Department was expected to lift a decades-long ban on any vehicles with motors on National Park hiking and biking trails. He began reporting to get reaction even before the rule change was announced. Meanwhile, Knickmeyer got a tip that evening from a non-profit foundation that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had without any public notice signed an order lifting the ban immediately and classifying e-bikes as non-motor vehicles.
https://apnews.com/d22c8bb8a83c48c0b421dc0da81efd0b
Few reporters were paying attention to a draft rule barring legal immigrants from getting green cards if they received benefits like Medicaid or food stamps â but APâs Colleen Long was.
Long, APâs Washington-based Homeland Security reporter, had spent months asking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services when the final rules would be published, making them official. With a heads-up from sources, she was eventually able to get an advance briefing and interview, writing the story just before heading off on vacation. Then, as soon as the rule appeared, she alerted the Washington desk to move the story, giving AP a major beat over other news organizations. By the time the White House and Homeland Security held briefings, Long already had all the key details on the wire.
For her skilled source-building, persistence and meticulous reporting, Long wins this weekâs Best of the States honors.
Washington-based homeland security reporter Colleen Long earned a key scoop â one that set the news agenda for days and left the competition scrabbling to catch up â when a source alerted her to a change in rules for those seeking asylum at the southern border: The rule would effectively end asylum for people coming from Central American countries and change decades of U.S. policy.
Following the tip, she also knew that she had a window of opportunity to drive her advantage home before the law was announced early the next morning. Longâs story caught other news organizations completely off guard and left major outlets to cite the AP for hours as they struggled to catch up.
For her deep knowledge of immigration policy, diligent reporting and outstanding speed of delivery on a story of vital interest, Colleen Long earns APâs Best of the Week.
An AP Best of States mention in February about the hundreds of companies avoiding President Donald Trumpâs steel tariffs raised questions about Trumpâs $12 billion aid package to farmers hurt by the tariffs. What happened next shows how states can produce sharp, data-driven journalism â simply by calling on the data team for help.
AP filed Freedom of Information Act requests for U.S. Department of Agriculture data that was analyzed by Balint Szalai, a Hungarian investigative reporter embedded with APâs data team, and Washington data team intern Riin Aljas.
Among their findings: Many big farming operations were legally collecting far more than the supposed caps on aid.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis reporter Steve Karnowski spoke to longtime USDA critics and interviewed farmers who defended taking the big checks, saying they didnât even cover their losses under Trumpâs trade war.
The Only-on-AP story ran on dozens of sites, and because the data and analysis were released to AP members in advance, many chose to localize their stories.
For sophisticated data analysis and on-the-ground reporting that shed light on a key consequences of trade policy, Karnowski, Szalai and Aljas share this weekâs Best of the States award.
In this weekâs installment of Best of the Week, Pennsylvania correspondent Mike Rubinkam shows us how to translate a local story for a global audience, give it scope and reach, and in the process build a following for ongoing coverage.
Rubinkam, who covers northeastern Pennsylvania, was watching his local 6 p.m. newscast when a story caught his eye: A beloved, longtime Walmart greeter with cerebral palsy had been told that his position was being eliminated in favor of a new âcustomer hostâ position.
His interest piqued, the next morning Rubinkam interviewed the man, Adam Catlin, for his first story. That got a lot of attention on social media, but it was only the start.
Rubinkam followed up with three more stories, updating the public about Catlinâs talks with Walmart and interviewing greeters across the country. He also obtained photos of several greeters in their Walmart vests.
With each update, the storyâs reach grew, with hundreds of online uses by AP customers and significant engagement on social media. And Walmart was listening. After a week of Rubinkamâs coverage, the mega-retailer announced it would make every effort to keep greeters with disabilities.
The story was a classic example of the impact that the APâs footprint can have, bringing attention to an issue that surfaced locally but had not yet received national attention. The outcome was a change in corporate policy at one of the worldâs biggest companies.
Because of his smart, dogged and curious reporting, and for capitalizing on the APâs global reach, Rubinkam earns APâs Best of the Week award.
for exclusively obtaining documents that expose a potential conflict of interest for Kelly Craft, President Donald Trumpâs nominee for United Nations ambassador, on the topics of climate change and fossil fuels. When senior Environmental Protection Agency officials sent an email to Craft, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, the acknowledgment email they received wasnât from the ambassador. It was from her husband, coal magnate Joseph Craft, a wealthy GOP donor who has joined the coal industry in pressing for access and regulatory relief from the EPA and the Trump administration. It wasnât the first time the Crafts had blurred roles â and email accounts â raising questions as senators consider her nomination to the U.N. Knickmeyer found several other examples of potential conflicts. https://bit.ly/2LugYWy
First word came from a trusted source cultivated by AP investigative reporter Garance Burke â Customs and Border Protection was holding 250 migrant infants and children at a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, without enough food, water or basic sanitation. âAre you available today?â the source asked, and AP swung into action.
El Paso, Texas, correspondent Cedar Attanasio met with attorneys who had just interviewed the children, while investigative reporter Martha Mendoza set to work contacting lawmakers and government officials. Burke, with the help of attorneys, found parents of the young children who were locked inside and inconsolable. The trio worked through the night, drafting a story focused on the fact that girls as young as 10 were caring for a toddler handed to them by a guard.
The story had enormous impact almost immediately. National outlets scrambled to match the story, citing AP extensively. The reportersâ next-day story was about lawmakersâ calls for change, and on Monday Mendoza and Burke again broke news: The Trump administration was moving most of the children out of Clint.
For a highly significant scoop that dominated the news cycle on multiple days and returned world attention to the border crisis, Mendoza, Burke and Attanasio win APâs Best of the Week award.
Washington science writer Seth Borenstein knew the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was not going to notify anyone when it posted new data on the nationâs air quality for 2018, but he knew where it would be posted. He also knew that the Trump administration was poised to replace an Obama-era clean-air rule with a new regulation that was friendlier to coal-fired power plants, so he kept checking for the agencyâs data.
When the data finally showed up, Borenstein teamed with New York-based Health and Science data journalist Nicky Forster to evaluate the data, put it in context and run it by scientists. Forster even pointed out errors that the EPA was forced to correct.
Their persistence made AP the first to report that the annual number of days of poor air quality in the U.S. had increased for the second year in a row, after decades of improvement. The story ran on the eve of the EPAâs announcement of its loosened regulation, undermining the rationale for the new standards with the governmentâs own numbers. Trumpâs new rule, experts told the AP, could turn what is so far a modest backslide into a deadly trend.
For diligent reporting and sophisticated analysis to hold a federal agency accountable for its data and regulatory policy, Borenstein and Forster earn this weekâs Best of the States award.
for gaining exclusive all-formats access to an already endangered shorebirdâs primary nesting area. The AP team documented the plight of the piping plovers being squeezed out by surging Great Lakes waters during this springâs Midwestern flooding. The package put the birdsâ story into the broader context of climate change, explaining that the rising waters result from prolonged heavy rainfall and snowmelt that some experts believe will become a ânew normal,â threatening the fragile Great Lakes coastline habitat. https://bit.ly/2NhTVB4
for a distinctive and deeply reported legislative story on the so-called âmarital rape exemptionâ or âspousal defense,â a legal loophole in many states that allows spouses to escape criminal prosecution for raping partners who are drugged, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. Smyth and Karnowski reported that previous state legislative attempts to remove those exemptions have a mixed record, but thatâs starting to change. https://bit.ly/2vLmScQ
for connecting sports writers across the AP with their colleagues at Canadian Press to survey players on all 31 National Hockey League teams on a defined set of topics, fueling exclusive stories during the playoffs. Among the takeaways: Almost half of the players surveyed support a change to the current playoff format.https://bit.ly/2UAregR
Twenty years have passed since the Columbine high school massacre, which was, to many people, the beginning of school shootings as we know them. In those years, life has changed: Mass shootings happen again and again, schoolchildren participate in lockdowns instead of fire drills, and many reflect on the moment in time when two young men took 13 lives with them on their suicidal quest.
AP was uniquely positioned to cover the two decades since the massacre, with journalists who were there, those who cover the Colorado community every day, and experts in polling, education and guns. Stories by Denver reporter Kathleen Foody and videojournalist Peter Banda led a deep all-formats package by dozens of journalists across the AP telling not just of the carnage but of those who survived it, their struggle, and the future.
But all the planning couldn't prepare anyone for this spot development: Early in the week, Sol Pais, a young Florida woman, prompted panic over a possible attack at Columbine, later taking her own life near the Colorado school. Miami reporter Kelli Kennedy tracked down a good friend of Pais who not only filled in personal details about her in an exclusive interview, but supplied photos of Pais and cast doubt on the official narrative about her friend.
The overarching theme of the spot and enterprise coverage focused on the short and long-term mental health issues from school shootings. The result was a unique, meaningful package that received impressive play nationally â online and in print. The video was among the top-used AP videos of the week.
For their work spearheading the package, and breaking news, Foody, Banda and Kennedy win this weekâs Best of the States.
When police busted several massage parlors engaging in prostitution in Florida in February, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft drew all the attention, but hundreds of other men were also charged in what seemed like a new approach for Florida authorities.
AP Florida reporters Mike Schneider, Orlando, and Terry Spencer, West Palm Beach, seized on the Kraft-driven attention to dig into legal issues surrounding massage parlors and prostitution in Florida. With a deep dive into state records and a key interview with a local source, the pair landed an AP Exclusive that showed a change in strategy: Usually only low-level massage therapists were arrested. Owners were rarely charged and typically faced only fines and probation. Johns typically were not charged at all.
But the recent investigation had instead focused heavily on the possibility of widespread human trafficking. Several spa owners were charged with felonies, and authorities also charged 300 men accused of being patrons, including Kraft and the former president of Citigroup. The Martin County sheriff told Spencer that he wanted to shut down the sex-massage industry in part by targeting the demand side.
Strong play included prominent display in The Washington Post.
For their enterprising use of state records and source-building to find an AP Exclusive in a story that drew enormous global attention, Schneider and Spencer win this weekâs Best of States award.
for transmitting live, world exclusive broadcast-quality video from a submersible operating 200 meters (656 feet) below the surface of the Indian Ocean as we accompanied scientists mapping the depths to better understand the impact of climate change. Using technology involving LED lights that pulse faster than the human eye can see, live pictures of the scientific mission near the Seychelles were sent to hundreds of AP customers around the world. https://bit.ly/2VPu0ji
