or being first to report that Flintâs water system is no longer exceeding the federal limit for lead, more than 15 months after the cityâs water crisis exploded. http://bit.ly/2jCDuMn
for providing an exclusive, all-formats look at a rare trip to Mexico by young undocumented immigrants to reunite with their long-lost family members just days before the start of the presidency of Donald Trump and his promised crackdown on immigration. http://apne.ws/2kXD0S3
It was just a coincidence: Emails from 2010, showing that the Atlanta Falcons were worried about the teamâs reliance on painkillers, were quietly entered into the court record as the Falcons were making just their second Super Bowl appearance. But AP sports columnist Jim Litke was prepared, and the result was a Super Bowl week scoop.
Litke's story is the Beat of the Week.
The team of data journalist Nicky Forster, science writer Drew Costley and storytelling producer Peter Hamlin, joined by AP colleagues, worked for months on an immersive interactive that takes readers across the globe, visualizing how and where exposure to extreme heat is escalating and its impact on population centers.
After securing early access to historical data tracking both population growth and a specific metric that gauges the impact of extreme temperatures on human health, APâs analysis found that between 1983 and 2016, exposure to dangerous heat tripled, and now affects about a quarter of the worldâs population.
The team spent weeks building an engaging presentation with 3D graphics and illustrations that brought the piece to life, drawing in readers. The interactive marked the latest example of APâs new storytelling formats and stood out from the deluge of coverage during the United Nations climate summit in Scotland.
For their resourcefulness, creativity and dedication in helping APâs audience understand the far-ranging impact of global warming in a new way, the team of Forster, Costley and Hamlin is this weekâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
Iowa City correspondent Ryan J. Foley has written extensively about problems tracking felons who are ineligible to vote in Iowa, but it had been five years since heâd gotten a copy of the database itself. So when a trusted source produced a state database of 103,000 felons, Foley set to work analyzing the data. He found it riddled with errors, including laughable mistakes â such as the Des Moines Police Department being banned from voting.
The story was used extensively by Iowa newspapers and broadcasters, who were especially interested given that Iowaâs governor is seeking to change the law regarding voting by felons who have completed their sentences.
For detailed research and reporting that produced an engaging story of statewide interest, Foley earns APâs Best of the States award.
The calls on social media were informal and scattered, urging demonstrations Oct. 1 in Baghdad to protest deteriorating living conditions in the battered Iraqi capital. There was nothing to indicate that the protests would be more significant than previous actions. But Khalid Mohammed, APâs chief photographer in Baghdad, had a hunch. He put the demonstrations on the bureauâs planner and urged all formats to be ready, despite the prevailing mood of skepticism.
Mohammedâs assessment proved prescient. The demonstrations erupted into five days of furious violence, the worst in the country since the quieting of its internal war against the Islamic State group. APâs staff witnessed the first violence and stayed on the grueling story for days.
For their anticipation and courageous eyewitness journalism that set AP apart, Mohammed, photographer Hadi Mizban, video journalist Ali Jabar and reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra share APâs Best of the Week award.
for using FOIA to reveal the details of a public records/confidentiality bill that had received no attention. Because of their reporting, the Legislature dropped the measure. http://bit.ly/2pa6kqF
produced a beautifully rendered, widely read and highly praised portrait of an America divided along political lines, focusing on the editor/publisher of a weekly newspaper and his disgruntled readers in the small prairie town of Benson, Minnesota. The immersive package was among the APâs most-viewed stories of the week and tops in reader engagement.Read more
It was a major catchphrase of Donald Trumpâs campaign: He would âdrain the swampâ in Washington.
But once Trump took office, Washingtonâs Michael Biesecker wasnât seeing it. Government officials, it appeared, were working on issues they lobbied for on behalf of private clients. He set out to track the administrationâs hiring and measure it against Trumpâs pledge.
It did not measure up.
Biesecker and colleagues Juliet Linderman and Richard Lardner found that at least 37 appointees across the government had been granted ethics waivers, allowing them to regulate the very industries in which they had worked. For plumbing the depths of the swamp, their story is Beat of the Week.
for breaking the news 90 minutes ahead of the White House announcement that the Obama administration was ending the longstanding immigration policy that allowed any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil to stay. http://apne.ws/2jAKlsz
for breaking the exclusive news that the 42 migrant caravan members arrested during a protest at the Mexico/U.S. border had their charges dropped. https://bit.ly/2Ulvpyf
for revealing the CIA considered using a drug it thought might work like a truth serum to force terror suspects to give up information about potential attacks, a nugget she found buried in once-classified documents obtained by the ACLU. https://bit.ly/2BoKXd2
From the very beginning of Jim Mustianâs stellar reporting on the death of Black motorist Ronald Greene, he has been driven by two main questions: What really happened to Greene on the night of his 2019 arrest? And was this a pattern of how Louisiana state troopers treated Black motorists?
Mustian answered the first last month when he obtained body camera video showing troopers stunning, choking, punching and dragging the unarmed Greene as he apologized and begged for mercy.
And he began answering the second this past week when he exclusively reported that the Louisiana State Police has convened a secret panel to investigate whether Troop F — the same unit involved in Greeneâs arrest — was systematically targeting other Black motorists. Mustianâs detailed reporting and solid sourcing turned up new cases and new video, and he landed the first-ever interview with one of the victims.
His scoop scored with heavy play and strong engagement. For dogged reporting to keep the AP ahead on a searing case of racial injustice and its continuing fallout, Mustian earns this weekâs Best of the States award.
for reporting exclusively that poaching and political opposition are hobbling the return of two species of endangered wolves and undercutting government recovery efforts that have cost more than $80 million.https://bit.ly/2YY1Vb7https://bit.ly/2Z1AddU
They are the littlest victims of the opioid crisis: Tens of thousands of children forced into foster care because of a parentâs drug use. On Nov. 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released data from 2016 showing new foster care cases involving parents using drugs have hit the highest point in more than three decades of record-keeping.
Less than two weeks after that data was released, the AP transmitted a package of stories focused on two of the states with the biggest one-year increases: Indiana and Georgia.
The project came about thanks to an analysis begun months earlier by Washington-based data journalist Meghan Hoyer. Hoyer worked with an analyst to access exclusive county-level data on foster care entries over the past 15 years, giving the AP a unique, comprehensive and localized look at the issues surrounding children entering the system.
That data allowed New York-based national writers Matt Sedensky to focus his reporting in Indiana, where parental drug use was increasingly cited as the reason for foster care removals. Sedensky convinced the chief juvenile court judge to grant him access to courtrooms and files normally shielded from public view. He also worked to get a caseworker to let him follow her as she visited families caring for children removed from their birth parentsâ custody, and spent time with adoptive families, medical professionals and others affected.
A second story, by national writer David Crary, also based in New York, zoomed in on one mother who had lost her three daughters to foster care and her battle to overcome addiction and win them back. In interviews and email exchanges over several months, mother of three Kim Silvers told wrenching details of her experience â including an interview at her joyous graduation ceremony after completing the program.
For providing moving insight into the plight of the youngest victims of the opioid crisis and the struggle of some families to break free, Hoyer, Sedensky and Crary share this weekâs Best of the States prize.
collaborated across continents to highlight widespread government failures to ensure necessary supplies of medical oxygen as countries face a resurgent COVID-19.A year into the pandemic and around the world, there is no good reason for people to still be dying due to shortages in medical oxygen. But they are. Drawing on reporting across Latin America and Africa, the team pulled together details of scams, corruption and overall mismanagement. Their reporting was backed by strong photography, including Meijaâs striking photos of people waiting for oxygen bottles, along with spot video coverage over the past month of people desperate to breathe while billions of dollars go unspent to help them.https://bit.ly/3bd0sXBhttps://bit.ly/3e9oPXS
collaborated on a piece that exposed racial disparities in the early rollout of the vaccine, with African Americans lagging behind the rest of the country in getting shots. The team was initially stymied by a lack of comprehensive national data and scattered figures from state to state and city to city. But they were able to piece together data from 17 states and two cities to make a powerful, data-driven statement on the issue.The story showed that Black Americans were getting shots at rates dramatically below their share of the population, a disturbing development considering how much of a role race has played in disproportionately affecting people of color in the pandemic. The analysis put the AP out front on a critical issue, two days before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out its own analysis of the issue. https://bit.ly/39OwuIQ
reported the first detailed account of crimes being committed by Eritrean military forces within Ethiopiaâs isolated Tigray region. Journalists following the crisis in the defiant region have struggled to find credible eyewitness accounts of the Eritreansâ presence. But the relentless work by Anna, APâs East African correspondent based in Kenya, finally paid off: A source put her in touch with a woman, normally a resident of Colorado, who, while on a trip to Ethiopia, witnessed Eritrean troops and their crimes firsthand in the remote village where her mother lives. Anna was able to draw out shocking details of the killing of children, mass graves and the looting of homes.The story, widely used by AP clients, was hailed as the first to document Eritrean activity in Tigray. Anna followed up with a second scoop in which the U.S. State Department called for all Eritrean forces to leave Tigray immediately, citing âcredible reportsâ of atrocities.https://bit.ly/3rqiyuehttps://bit.ly/3cOrDsKhttps://bit.ly/3jeRRpK
for determined source work that revealed President Donald Trump considering a dramatic expansion of his travel ban amid a renewed election-year focus on immigration. https://bit.ly/374a56n
delivered an AP international exclusive interview with the Rwandan foreign minister and an early look at a much-awaited Rwandan study of Franceâs role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The report says the French government bears âsignificantâ responsibility for âenabling a foreseeable genocideâ in which an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered.Thanks to source building and past reporting on Franceâs efforts to come to terms with its role in the genocide, AP landed the interview that scooped even French national media. Corbet had earned the trust of researchers on the subject through her reporting on Rwanda-France relations, and notably on a previous study that found France had âoverwhelming responsibilityâ for the genocide. The lead researcher praised APâs coverage and impact to Rwandaâs President Paul Kagame. As a result, the Rwandan government offered AP an international exclusive on their 600-page report and an interview with the foreign minister for text and video clients. https://bit.ly/3tYhVd7
