Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP journalists collaborate to break news after emergency plane landing

for detailing the confusion, chaos and fear inside the plane when a Southwest Airlines plane’s engine exploded, breaking a window and pulling one passenger halfway out the aircraft to her death. In other stories, they profiled the heroic pilot who landed the plane and broke news that the FAA would order inspections of engine fan blades like the one that caused the accident. https://bit.ly/2Kixp5z

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Iraqi offensive engages Islamic State forces near Mosul

for dominating global coverage with their video and stories on the renewed offensive against west Mosul in Iraq. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f084b4f094f440058e6...

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Analysis: ‘Obamacare’ shapes state spending on opioid crisis

for their Health and Science accountability data project that revealed how millions is being spent to fight the opioid crisis. The AP analysis of FOIA records found that states with expanded Medicaid under “Obamacare” spent the funding more slowly than states that didn’t expand the health insurance program because the Medicaid already covers nearly everyone who is poor and needs treatment for addiction. https://bit.ly/2yVcqRm

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

‘Viral Questions’ series cuts through the COVID confusion

captured the biggest audience yet for AP’s “Viral Questions” series, addressing two questions: one on the delta variant and a second on the potential for long-term symptoms after being vaccinated.The week’s first piece, “What should I know about the delta variant?,” gave readers the most up-to-date and accurate information the AP could provide about the delta variant. The item was first done by Ghosal in late June as the variant was gaining attention, and was recently updated by Neergaard to note that it has become the “most contagious coronavirus mutant so far in the pandemic.”Meanwhile, Tanner, who has been reporting on “long haulers” since early in the pandemic, looked at a growing question among experts: Could breakthrough infections result in long COVID? Tanner addressed the issue in a manner that was frank without being alarming, just as the topic was gaining traction with the broader public.Each piece — as have all of the 117 “Viral Questions” since the series began — has been accompanied by Hamlin’s illustrations. The series is produced weekly — sometimes several times a week — with contributions from reporters around the AP. It serves as a model for engaging harried audiences, cutting through clutter and misinformation by delivering quick, accessible answers to the most pressing coronavirus questions in a language, tone and format that meets readers where they are in their lives.https://aplink.news/sizhttps://aplink.news/drx

Best of the States

Joint investigation reveals ‘leadership vacuum’ after backlash against public health officials

AP reporter Michelle Smith was working on another project in June when she came up with the names of a dozen or so public health officials who had quit, retired or been fired. Sensing a trend, Smith and reporters at Kaiser Health News continued to track those departures as the pandemic worsened and the backlash against public health restrictions became more strident.

The journalists contacted officials in all 50 states and interviewed dozens of people, finding a public health leadership vacuum developing at a critical time in the pandemic. They told the stories of public servants who toiled through the pandemic only to be reviled by their neighbors — including the wrenching story of an official whose husband would not even follow her recommendation to require masks in the family store. The timely all-formats story included a data distribution, interactive graphics and a sidebar with portraits and quotes of public health officials. 

For a deeply reported package that examines a vital component of the pandemic response, Smith, Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Hannah Recht and Lauren Weber earn this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Teamwork delivers standout AP coverage of July 4 mass shooting

mobilized on July Fourth to deliver fast, multiformat coverage of the mass shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that ultimately resulted in seven deaths and dozens wounded. Local and regional staffers responded quickly with all-formats coverage in the Chicago suburb while colleagues across the U.S. and into Mexico stepped in to assist with reporting, writing and editing.Monday’s efforts laid the groundwork for coverage in the days that followed, including more breaking news updates, victim profiles, a narrative on how the events unfolded, explainers, an investigative piece on how the suspect was able to get weapons despite Illinois’ red flag law and more.The mainbar story trended near the top on AP platforms for much of the week and made the front page of newspapers across the country.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Breaking news on US ramp-up of federal executions

have broken exclusives on this year’s resumption of federal executions following a 17-year hiatus, and the accelerated pace of executions during President Donald Trump’s lame-duck period. They have also witnessed every federal execution.Their stories have revealed that the Justice Department considered using firing squads or borrowing electric chairs due to a possible shortage of drugs used for lethal injection, and that the execution team at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the executions are carried out, was sickened with COVID-19, even as they planned more deaths.But above all, the AP witnesses have risked their own health to enter the federal prison in Terre Haute to attend every execution. The team has been unstoppable, delivering fast, accurate reporting that has made AP the definitive source for news on this topic.https://bit.ly/3nlUxTHhttps://bit.ly/2ITQTkShttps://bit.ly/3ahw91Lhttps://bit.ly/3h13Shl

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP breaks news of country star Kacey Musgraves’ divorce

reported exclusively that Grammy-winning country superstar Kacey Musgraves and her musician-husband, Ruston Kelly, had filed for divorce. AP customers ran with the full story, while competitors had to cite AP in their own reporting. https://bit.ly/2O6bjq0

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP figure skating crew leads breaking news from Olympics

dominated coverage of figure skating from Beijing, reporting the top breaking news stories of the 2022 Olympics. With help from colleagues working in all formats, along with the Moscow staff and fellow staffers promoting AP’s content on social media, they covered all the angles with some of the biggest stories of the Winter Olympics, including AP’s most-read story of the month.Even before the pivotal night of the women’s competition, Skretta and the team delivered standout work, setting up the Games and the expected dominance of both the Russian women and American favorite Nathan Chen. And when a positive drug test was revealed for Russian favorite Kamila Valieva, the team kept AP well ahead of the competition.Among the highlights were Ellingworth’s definitive piece on Valieva's controversial coach, a follow-up the morning after the eventful women’s final, and fresh takes on the sport from Ho and Morrison, highlighting issues of body image, racism and the impact of the sport on such young skaters. Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Creative storytelling brings new life to spectacle of cicadas

teamed up, using creativity, tenacity and multiformat collaboration to bring a fresh perspective to a widely covered natural phenomenon happening every 17 years.Borenstein, an AP science writer, had done cicada stories before and knew the timing would be tricky. The bugs emerge only when the temperature is right, usually in mid-May. He and Ritzell, an animator and video journalist on the Health and Science team, began hours of Zoom interviews with bug scientists in mid-March.Meanwhile, Washington-based photographer Carolyn Kaster made it her mission to document the bugs she called “beautifully weird.” She had first encountered the Brood X cicadas 17 years ago in Pennsylvania and knew they would be a challenging subject — if she could find them. Kaster reached out to an EPA scientist and photographed undergraduate students who were sticking thermometers into the ground to find the places where cicadas would soon be emerging. She found some nymphs that she photographed as they matured, and for a week she went out every night looking for mature bugs and their telltale red eyes.Adding a key element, Health & Science video journalist Kathy Young and Ritzel produced an animated video explainer on the life cycle of cicadas. The animation, guest-narrated by Allen Breed, was built around the colorful soundbites of a University of Maryland entomologist describing the cicadas’ life cycle.The team’s all-formats package was timed perfectly, just as the bugs were starting to emerge in some places. Borenstein and Kaster followed up several days later with an illustrated FAQ explainer on cicadas.The package created buzz on social media and was among the week’s most-viewed stories on AP News, while the animation and the newsroom video were used globally, including South Korea and India among others.https://aplink.news/pjlhttps://aplink.video/vkphttps://aplink.news/0ab

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP breaks news on Justice Department election investigations

both delivered scoops on the U.S. Department of Justice and election investigations.Balsamo kept hearing rumors of the DOJ looking into election cases, but he knew there were rules prohibiting such investigations during an ongoing election. He kept asking until a source revealed a memo Attorney General William Barr had sent to prosecutors nationwide authorizing federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities before the election is certified, despite the fact there was no evidence of widespread fraud giving prosecutors the ability to go around the longstanding policy. The scoop reverberated nationwide, especially as concerns grew over Trump’s ability to use the levers of government to hang on to power. The story was widely used, with Politico, Axios and NBC citing AP in their coverage of Barr’s memo. AP’s alert and a full story were on the wire more than 40 minutes before other major news organizations obtained a copy of the memo.Meanwhile, Las Vegas reporter Michelle Price was digging into how the DOJ was pursuing allegations from the Trump campaign that voters may have cast improper ballots in Nevada. Price and Balsamo teamed up with voting reporter Anthony Izaguirre to report out two ongoing investigations, and how they may not hold up to scrutiny. Price used her contacts to get exclusive first-person accounts from U.S. military members who thought they’d been wrongly accused of fraud for voting by mail from out of state by Nevada authorities and DOJ officials.https://bit.ly/2Kqu09ehttps://bit.ly/3lOlxKR

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Stories explore impact of Trump coal decisions in the states

for following up the Trump administration’s actions promoting the coal industry with a reality check story and a quickly turned enterprise piece about what the actions might mean for one coal town. The latter story prompted a tweet from the president. http://apne.ws/2oF2cS5 http://apne.ws/2oDzzVQ

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Secret panel investigating Louisiana State Police unit’s treatment of Black motorists

From the very beginning of Jim Mustian’s 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 Greene’s arrest  — was systematically targeting other Black motorists. Mustian’s 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 week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP team demonstrates what a community loses when a small-town newspaper dies

What’s lost when a newspaper dies? And how do you tell the story of this slow disaster happening in front of everyone’s eyes and still make the world sit up and take notice?

For reporters Dave Bauder and David Lieb, the answer was by focusing on the residents of one small town as they explained the death of local journalism in an authentic, vivid and compelling way.

It’s a story that’s happened repeatedly across the country, with 1,400 cities or towns losing newspapers in the last 15 years. The aftermath of the loss of the Daily Guide in Waynesville, Missouri, was richly told by a multiformat team of text, video and photo journalists as the centerpiece story for “Fading Light,” the AP’s Sunshine Week package on the decline of local news.

New York-based media reporter Bauder and Lieb, a member of the state government team based in Missouri’s capitol, spent several days in Waynesville and its twin city, St. Robert, reporting the story. Denver video journalist Peter Banda and Kansas City photographer Orlin Wagner worked closely with them to shoot visuals, while Alina Hartounian, the multiformat coordinator for the U.S. beat teams, created social videos that drove readers to the story. Bauder also secured an interview with executives at the company that shuttered the Daily Guide.

The package received incredible attention and sparked discussion online. Bauder and Lieb’s text story has been viewed nearly 120,000 times with high engagement, it has landed on nearly 30 front pages, and has been cited in several influential media reports.

For masterful work shining a light on a problem that has left whole communities less informed, Bauder, Lieb, Banda, Wagner and Hartounian win AP’s Best of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Breaking news on Dolphins and NFL anthem policies

for his scoop that the Miami Dolphins told players they could face discipline for protesting during the national anthem, a story followed several hours later by the NFL and its players union saying they would halt enforcement of all anthem policies while trying to reach a compromise between players and owners. https://bit.ly/2mtuJXV

Best of the Week — First Winner

Lebanon-based team first to interview Islamic State detainees in Syria

An Islamic State cell notorious for beheading western hostages has become a major story line surrounding the terror group and its murderous onslaught in Syria. The arrest of members of the four-person cell – nicknamed “the Beatles” because of their British accents – led to heightened interest among readers and AP clients.

So it was big news and a major scoop for the AP when an all-formats team made up of reporter Sarah El Deeb, video journalist Andrea Rosa and photographer Hussein Malla obtained the first interview of two men identified as surviving members of the infamous cell.

El Deeb had been working a source for access to foreign fighters detained by Kurdish forces in Syria. When AP finally received access, the detainees were at first reluctant to talk on the record. The Lebanon-based team kept pressing, and ultimately got them to agree to an audio interview, with photos. The interview generated huge interest and dominated headlines, particularly in Britain.

For pushing to make AP the first news organization to interview two suspects alleged to have participated in some of the Islamic State’s group’s most notorious crimes, the team of El Deeb, Rosa and Malla share this week’s Beat of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP review finds states understaffed for contact tracing

found that as states begin to reopen, local health departments charged with tracking down everyone who has been in close contact with a person who tests positive for the new coronavirus are still scrambling to hire the number of people they need to do the job. AP’s review showed that states are often hundreds – even thousands – of people short of the targets for contact tracing. https://bit.ly/2XgDcQn

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP analysis: Wealth, enrollment disparities threaten smaller Black colleges

teamed up to reveal wide disparities among the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, with many smaller private schools fighting for survival.The reporting by Hudspeth Blackburn and Amy was built on an analysis of enrollment and endowment data by data journalists Fenn and Fassett. They found that many smaller, lesser-known HBCUs are struggling with weak endowments, aging buildings and steady enrollment declines. And while HBCUs in the U.S. have received millions of dollars in federal coronavirus aid and fresh attention after last summer’s racial justice protests, not all benefit equally.The team’s comprehensive story was complemented by embeddable graphics illustrating the disparities, and advance detailed data on all 102 HBCUs for localization by AP customers. https://aplink.news/wrn

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Iowa pair, first contacted by AP, deny involvement in Tibbetts’ death

was steadfast: Before publicly identifying two men suggested as suspects in the 2018 murder of Mollie Tibbetts, he needed to talk to them. The sentencing of another man convicted in the stabbing death of the University of Iowa student had been delayed after his defense attorneys offered up Gavin Jones and Dalton Hansen as possible suspects. Foley was appalled that Iowa media outlets were identifying the two men as suspects without trying to reach them for comment. Neither man had been contacted — by law enforcement, news media or anyone else — after they were named by the defense.That changed when Foley dug deep to unearth phone numbers buried in unrelated court documents. When reached, Hansen called the allegations crazy but confirmed his connection to Jones and said he knew the inmate who was implicating the pair in the case. Jones also eventually answered Foley’s call, but demanded to know how Foley got the number, started to swear at him and almost hung up. But Foley calmed the man, keeping him on the line long enough to maintain his innocence and assert he has alibis lined up to share with investigators whenever they reach out to him. “The cops haven’t talked to me. No one has talked to me. You are the first person that has called me,” he told Foley.Other outlets had stories about the judge’s expected ruling rejecting the defense arguments, but Foley was exclusive, leading with the comments of both men accused by defense lawyers.https://aplink.news/ubk

Best of the Week — First Winner

Cataclysmic fires cap off week of momentous and devastating news in California

California’s news staff still was in the midst of reporting the tragic night-spot shooting in Thousand Oaks when news reached the AP that a wildfire in Northern California was spreading quickly, sending thousands fleeing.

Bay Area freelance photographer Noah Berger, as good a fire chaser as there is anywhere, tipped the office off that the Northern California fire looked explosive. By 11 a.m. Sacramento reporter Don Thompson was hitting the road, and a first AP NewsAlert moved saying people fleeing for their lives had abandoned vehicles as the fire swept in.

AP’s all-formats coverage went into high gear, with staffers pouring in from the region. In addition to Thompson, who stayed at the scene with fire crews for several days straight, Portland, Ore., all-formats reporter Gilly Flaccus arrived, producing unmatched interviews in text and video of survivors and of crews searching for the remains of those killed. San Francisco reporter Paul Elias gathered information on the dramatic rescues and chaotic evacuation, while Las Vegas photographer John Locher and Denver videographer Peter Banda provided gripping visuals from the scene.

AP was first to report thousands of homes destroyed, first to report a named victim, and we were alone in accompanying a search and recovery crew in all formats as they went to a victim’s home and found her remains.

The coverage was nuanced and emotional. California News Editor Frank Baker says there was no one on the California staff who didn’t contribute, working unrelentingly from last week’s elections and mass shooting straight into the wildfire.

For outstanding work, bolstered and supported by California’s all-formats reporting staff and editors, Thompson, Flaccus, Elias, Berger, Locher and Banda share this AP's Best of the Week.