Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

In all formats: Nurse battles back from COVID, lung transplant

produced a powerful and intimate narrative of one nurse’s precarious fight to survive COVID-19 — including the double lung transplant that saved her life.National writer Geller had wanted to find a health care worker recovering after being incapacitated by COVID. He started out calling hospitals around the country with lung transplant and COVID long-hauler programs, finally gettting a referral from Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which had performed the first and, by far, the most COVID lung transplants. They put him in touch with nurse Kari Wegg, who at one point before her transplant had been in a coma with little chance of recovery. Wegg got winded during their first phone conversation, a couple of weeks after she returned home, but she and her husband were open to telling their story. The AP trio would spend large parts of four days in the family’s Indiana home. The result was a riveting read with compelling visuals by Arbogast and Crawford, whose video was edited by multiformat journalist Allen Breed. The package won terrific online play, including the Chicago Tribune and Indiana news sites, with remarkably high reader engagement.https://bit.ly/3vtLoMDhttps://bit.ly/3gQXye6

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats team reveals Brazil’s alleged Bitcoin pyramid schemes

traveled to Cabo Frio, a tourist city a couple hours north of Rio de Janeiro which has been wracked with problems and violence following a surge of Bitcoin pyramid schemes. Reporting in all formats, their trip followed Brazil’s federal police bust last April of three people loading a chopper with $1.3 million in neatly packed bills.Brazil-based text stringer Jeantet obtained hundreds of police and prosecutors’ reports regarding the alleged pyramid scheme run by the town’s top dog, Glaidson dos Santos. She sorted through the reports, crafting a gripping narrative of the man's rise to power and fortune, and his eventual imprisonment. But she also discovered the story was more complex, with many of dos Santos’ former clients swearing that he was being wrongly accused for having the audacity to beat a rigged financial system at its own game.Such nuance gave the reader an inside look at why Bitcoin has become hugely popular in Brazil. Senior cameraman Lobão delivered video footage produced by Tatiana Pollastri, and photo freelancer Prado made the stills. The text story was published in English, Spanish and Portuguese, picked up by publications from USA Today to The Times of India.https://aplink.news/j5xhttps://aplink.video/5s2

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Enterprising reporters reveal another China far from Olympic bubble

delivered two compelling stories far from the hermetically sealed and officially sanctioned Olympic bubble, focusing on marginalized people in Chinese society and official efforts to suppress unflattering media.Resourceful reporting by Kang and McNeil revealed the success of Chinese government efforts to subdue unrest in Tibet, the site of violent protests during the 2008 Summer Games hosted by China.And Wu reported the story of a chained woman 500 miles from Beijing who was shown in a viral video with a chain around her neck, her circumstances unclear. Chinese authorities tried to block the video but Wu revealed another side of China, where creative netizens stay one step ahead of the censors to keep injustices from obscurity.AP’s Tibet story was unmatched in any format. Other Chinese and foreign outlets covered the chained woman story, but not with the depth and detail of AP. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Census reveals Black migration from big US cities

teamed up to reveal where Black people in the United States are growing in number and where their population is shrinking. Tareen a Chicago-based race and ethnicity writer, and Schneider, an Orlando, Florida-based census writer, reported a pair of telling stories: one that found Black residents have been leaving some of the nation’s largest cities for the suburbs, and another about Black growth in less-congested cities with lower profiles.The stories, elevated by the work of photographers Huh and Otero in Chicago and Dallas respectively, complemented each other but also stood on their own as strong enterprise work. Other news organizations had done their own stories on Black population trends, but none with the depth and range of the AP package. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP dominates French election coverage with nimble live video

used sharp planning and fast election day pivots to put AP well ahead of the competition, delivering unmatched live and edited video coverage of the first round of France's presidential election — a vote with implications for Europe’s future.As the election unfolded Sunday, senior producer Schaeffer recognized leading French broadcasters heavily using AP’s morning live feed from voting stations. Seeing the demand, he and the team quickly committed to live coverage throughout the day. That usage by French broadcasters was particularly telling: They chose AP over their own coverage — and crucially, over AP’s major French competitor, a tribute to the broad, balanced coverage which dominated AP’s live offerings throughout the day.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP Exclusive: Inside the 11-day search for escaped Alabama inmate and his jailer accomplice

As the search for Alabama fugitives Casey White and Vicky White captured the attention of the world, Washington-based federal law enforcement reporter Mike Balsamo reached out, working his network of sources in the Justice Department and the U.S. Marshals Service for details.

Balsamo also connected with the U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Alabama, knowing he would be the person most likely to have the inside information that would enable AP to put together a clear timeline of a messy escape saga littered with gaps and confusing accounts.

That contact turned out to be pivotal after the pursuit came to a violent end in Indiana on May 9. The marshal’s exclusive account of the 11-day search, coupled with details Balsamo picked up from other sources, gave AP a story rich with previously unreported detail and context. It also made for an exceptionally easy-to-follow narrative. The resulting story played widely, from Alabama to Australia.

For using all his resources to distinguish AP’s coverage on this extremely competitive story, Mike Balsamo is AP’s Best of the Week – First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP connects therapist accused of sexual assault to a dark past

was the first and only journalist to reveal that a New Hampshire therapist accused of sexual assault previously spent 12 years in prison, where he changed his name and earned a degree in counseling after a conviction for a notorious drunk driving incident that resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl.A tip from the client accusing Peter Stone of abuse started Ramer’s in-depth reporting on the therapist’s dark past and the ethical questions raised over whether professionals should disclose prior criminal convictions.Even major New England news outlets that reported Stone’s 2021 arrest on sexual assault charges did not link him to his previous conviction as Pete Dushame; Ramer alone made that connection. Her story played widely with news outlets in the Northeast and beyond, and ranked near AP’s top for pageviews and reader engagement over the weekend.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reports legacy of slave who inspired beach’s name

tell a story that resonated across the nation on the eve of Juneteenth: the curious history of a Massachusetts beach named after an enslaved African American. Legend has it that Robin Mingo was promised his freedom if the tide ever receded enough for him to walk out onto a rocky ledge offshore of what is now known as Mingo Beach on the campus of Endicott College.Boston reporter Marcelo and photographer Senne interviewed students and faculty at the school who have been researching the local tale and proposing ways to memorialize the slave at his namesake beach. They hope the efforts spark broader discussions about the role of slavery in New England.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP Exclusive: Unserved 1955 arrest warrant discovered for woman at center of Emmett Till case

“And I do not say this lightly: Holy shit.” That, from producer and Black List founder Franklin Leonard, sums up the collective reaction to the scoop by AP’s Jay Reeves and Emily Wagster Pettus: Searchers in Mississippi had discovered the nearly 70-year-old unserved warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose unproven accusation against Emmett Till led to the Black teenager’s lynching, a horror that galvanized the civil rights movement.

Reeves had reported previously that relatives and activists were still seeking the long-lost warrant, and years of source work paid off with a tip: The document had been found in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. He confirmed it and teamed up with Wagster Pettus, contacting law enforcement officials and legal experts on what the discovery means to the case, which had been considered closed.

The resulting story made waves, scoring heavy play with customers and on AP platforms.For breaking news on one of the country’s most notorious civil rights cases, Reeves and Wagster Pettus share this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Only on AP: Mexico cartel extermination site yields haunting clues

built trust with investigators, gaining exclusive all-formats access to a gruesome cartel “extermination site” in northern Mexico where a forensics team searches for the remains of some of Mexico’s nearly 100,000 missing people. After six months of work at the site in Nuevo Laredo, investigators still can’t offer an estimate of how many people disappeared there. Countless bone fragments were spread across 75,000 square feet of desert scrubland, and in a single room of a ruined house, the compacted, burnt human remains and debris were nearly 2 feet deep. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP explores racial double standard in Capitol attack

explored the apparent disparity between the response to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and last year’s racial justice protests.New York-based race and ethnicity writer Aaron Morrison had watched President Donald Trump’s supporters storm the Capitol and reasoned that the protesters who called out racial injustice over the summer wouldn’t have been allowed to get close enough to the Capitol to breach it. Morrison and the AP team set out to examine the circumstances.Sources gave Morrisons interviews or statements saying that Black people who protest systemic racism are often met by police or National Guard troops equipped with assault rifles and tear gas. However, they pointed out, the mostly white mob that attacked the Capitol was met by an underwhelming law enforcement presence.Urban affairs reporter Gillian Flaccus contributed to Morrison’s reporting from Portland, Oregon, where Black Lives Matter advocates quickly noted the discrepancy between Trump’s response to racial justice protests in the Pacific Northwest city and his encouragement of the violence in the halls of Congress.Washington-based broadcast producer Padmananda Rama interviewed newly sworn-in St. Louis Rep. Cori Bush, who said the race of the Capitol rioters played a big part in their ability to breach the building; her video was packaged with the text piece. And Top Stories Hub photo editor Alyssa Goodman pulled together several images contrasting how the last week’s insurrection was handled as opposed to the racial justice protests.The violent breaching of the halls of power on Capitol Hill represented “one of the plainest displays of a racial double standard in both modern and recent history,” Morrison wrote.https://bit.ly/3bCEcqvhttps://bit.ly/38HK0x2

Best of the States

All-formats reporting from a Michigan potato farm reveals how climate change threatens crop storage

After reporting for years on life-or-death results of global warming such as floods and wildfires, Traverse City, Michigan, correspondent John Flesher uncovered another serious but little-recognized consequence: Climate change poses an increasingly troublesome and costly threat to food crop storage in the United States and much of the world. 

To illustrate the problem, Flesher teamed with Detroit-based video journalist Mike Householder and photographer Carlos Osorio on the farm of a Michigan family now using refrigerators to cool their harvested potatoes. Michigan has been the top U.S. producer of potatoes used for chips, thanks to a mild climate that has — until now at least — let farmers store their crops for months using only outdoor air to cool them. Scientists say those conditions are likely become scarcer as the planet gets hotter.

The team’s exclusive, all-formats package drew strong play nationally. 

For relatable coverage that calls attention to an underreported consequence of climate change — one with widespread implications — the team of Flesher, Householder and Osorio wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats exclusives examine Japan tsunami, 10 years on

produced a string of visually driven exclusives to feed global curiosity about how Japan has fared a decade after one of history’s worst tragedies — the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that upended the lives of millions in 2011.Nuga and Hoshiko spent time on the battered northeastern coast while Yamaguchi, Tanaka and Komae made their way into the area around the Fukushima nuclear plant. The trips produced compelling before-and-after images of the wreckage, and all-formats vignettes of the lives of the survivors with explainers, galleries, videos and exclusive stories. Among the highlights were the moving story of a man who learned to dive so he could search, week after week, for for the remains of his wife, and gripping visual essays of the still-scarred landscape of northeast Japan, the eerie no-go zones near the nuclear plant and a hotel that has done weekly bus tours for hundreds of thousands of visitors interested in seeing the ravaged landscape. AP’s video showing was particularly strong, including footage of people symbolically searching the beach for bodies of the missing and quick live views of commemorative ceremonies across the country.https://bit.ly/3vBYckXhttps://bit.ly/38ONuxMhttps://bit.ly/2Q62S20https://bit.ly/3f1zFjthttps://bit.ly/3vyESEVhttps://bit.ly/3ttHTVm

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP live, exclusive: Kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls released

had previously covered the 2014 kidnap of the Chibok schoolgirls, and were well aware of the challenges they would face working in remote Zamfara state after hundreds of girls were kidnapped from a boarding school in northwest Nigeria on Feb. 26. And when the girls were released the March 2, the resourceful pair overcame all obstacles to deliver outstanding coverage, particularly live video.After making their way to Gusaure, the state capital, video journalist Oyekanmi and photographer Alamba had carefully reviewed the security situation on the ground, talking to local journalists and officials, as well as with AP editors, before setting off for the school to report on the missing girls. Returning to the capital after a day on the road, they worked well past midnight filing their work on balky internet. Then, with little more than two hours sleep, Oyekanmi received a tip from a local friend that the girls had been released. They roused their driver and raced to the Government House, powering up their live video gear as they drove. They talked their way past security and were broadcasting live exclusively at 5:50 a.m. local time as the schoolgirls were brought back safely for medical check-ups and reunion with their families. Their work dominated AP customer video usage around the world on the day, and Alamba’s photo coverage was no less impressive.https://bit.ly/2PW0vPnhttps://bit.ly/2OOdGRDhttps://bit.ly/2OGdgNkhttps://bit.ly/3lafpgd

Best of the States

AP journalists deliver outstanding all-formats coverage to mark 500,000 COVID deaths in US

The U.S. surpassed a solemn milestone on Feb. 22 with 500,000 COVID-19 deaths — a moment in the pandemic that required thoughtful planning and storytelling, and precise execution across the AP for the coverage to stand out.

Editors began planning weeks in advance. They wanted impactful photo and video packages, lightning-fast spot coverage of the milestone being reached, and a text story to anchor the report that was different from AP’s previous recognition of 100,000, 250,000 and 400,000 deaths. 

The result was a package that resonated in all formats.

For meeting the grim milestone with compelling, comprehensive coverage, the team of Adam Geller, Jocelyn Gecker, Alyssa Goodman, Pete Brown, Eugene Garcia, Manuel Valdes and Krysta Fauria wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP investigation reveals nonexistent mask shortage

acted on a tip from a former federal official to reveal that hospitals were continuing to ration medical masks for their workers even when they had months of supply in store. The team’s investigation found a logistical breakdown at the heart of the perceived mask shortage, rooted in federal failures to coordinate supply chains and provide hospitals with clear rules about how to manage their medical equipment.The initial tip came from a source inside the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who shared pages of emails asking why U.S. manufacturers weren’t able to sell their products. In a series of interviews, the reporters surveyed hospital procurement officers representing more than 300 hospitals around the country and learned that all had two to 12 months supply of N95 masks in storage, but almost all were limiting workers to one mask per day, or even one per week. Meanwhile, at least one manufacturer had so many masks warehoused that it recently got government approval to export them.The story was used widely, and Dearen was interviewed live on CBS News. https://bit.ly/3pOAhub

Best of the States

AP analysis: In the US, a centuries-old race war continues to rage against people of color

As AP race and ethnicity writer Aaron Morrison covered the protests that grew out of the 2020 killings of George Floyd and others, he also saw President Donald Trump on TV, trying to undermine the racial reckoning at every turn.

Fast forward to Jan. 6, when a mob of mostly white rioters, upset that Trump wasn't reelected, violently breached the U.S. Capitol. Morrison connected the dots of what he described as a war of white aggression. “A war rages on in America,” Morrison wrote in this analysis piece, “It started with slavery and never ended ...” 

With powerful video by Noreen Nasir, portraits by Chris Carlson and presentation by Alyssa Goodman, the package received prominent play and sparked discussion both online and within the AP.

For a timely, compelling package that looks at the state of race relations with historical context and thoughtful analysis, the team of Morrison, Nasir, Carlson and Goodman earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reveals details of Eritrean atrocities in Tigray region

reported the first detailed account of crimes being committed by Eritrean military forces within Ethiopia’s isolated Tigray region. Journalists following the crisis in the defiant region have struggled to find credible eyewitness accounts of the Eritreans’ presence. But the relentless work by Anna, AP’s 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 “credible reports” of atrocities.https://bit.ly/3rqiyuehttps://bit.ly/3cOrDsKhttps://bit.ly/3jeRRpK

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Up close, personal reporting on the US political divide

wanted to explore how people on different sides of the political gulf in the U.S. view the election and transfer of power.They found two Maryland residents who represent polar political opposites: one a Trump Republican who has two TVs tuned to conservative media; the other a staunch Democrat eager for the inauguration of Joe Biden. Both are members of a program designed to bridge the nation’s extraordinary political divide.The AP team followed as the pair navigated the turbulent transition between administrations, careful to report fairly while not making their divergent positions equivalent — the journalists made it clear that the facts establish Biden’s win and do not support claims of a stolen election. The all-formats package attracted attention and yes, sparked heated discussion online. https://bit.ly/3ckElj2https://bit.ly/2Yn9r19

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Intrepid work reveals boats built for migrant smuggling

spent a week on assignment in Western Sahara, gaining exclusive access to a little-seen but vital piece of the migrant smuggling chain — boats that are built to order, then spirited from the remote desert sand to carry migrants to the Canary Islands. A European Union agency calls it “the most dangerous migratory route in the world.”El Shamy, North Africa photographer based in Rabat, Morocco, was closely monitored by security agents in the disputed territory, but was able to slip into the desert in company with locals. There, he was introduced to a senior member of a smuggling network and was able to convince the smugglers that he would protect their anonymity while photographing them at work. His initiative and courage were rewarded with striking images and detailed reporting on the thriving trade of supplying boats for the perilous Atlantic migrant route.https://bit.ly/3t1Wc43https://bit.ly/3cmUZyo