for an incredibly powerful and moving photo-driven story of a number of wildfire survivors hunkering down and staying put in the town of Paradise, California. A sensitive collaboration between photos and text that works on many levels. https://bit.ly/2RnmNWb
for their APNewsBreak on the biggest scandal in the DEAâs recent history, detailing how a rogue agent in Colombia teamed up with a top money launderer to allegedly steal $7 million over six years. The story, built on sourcework and solid reporting, was the second-most read on the APNews app on a Trump-dominated news day, and on its second day was still garnering 35,000 readers. In Colombia, it was front-page news and spurred a police investigation into the rogue agentâs Colombian wife. https://bit.ly/2FZtPgD
for ensuring that AP received an advance copy of the prepared remarks by William Barr, President Donald Trumpâs nominee for attorney general, breaking the news that Barr would tell his confirmation hearing it is âvitally importantâ for the Russia investigation to reach its conclusion and that he believed the public should learn of its results. https://bit.ly/2S9cR5W
for his two-day beat on news that a group led by Taiwanese-Canadian billionaire Joseph Tsai, the minority owner of the Brooklyn Nets, is close to a deal to buy a WNBA team, the New York Liberty. Tsai is a co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. https://bit.ly/2ARzguJ
for their yearlong coverage of Yemenâs war, capped with a groundbreaking exclusive exposing how corruption in food aid distribution is worsening the countryâs hunger crisis. The package was accompanied by a beautiful photo essay on Yemenis encountered in the teamâs travels and a video explainer that helped our consumers understand an enormously complicated war.https://bit.ly/2ViNI7Ehttps://bit.ly/2Fkib0uhttps://bit.ly/2LYleMt
New Delhi-based investigative reporter Tim Sullivan spent months looking into whispers that Indian nuns had endured sexual pressure by Catholic priests. What he found, after months of reporting into the closed-off world of Catholic convents, was a pattern of abuse that went back decades, ranging from drunken priests barging into nunsâ rooms to outright rape. He also found a culture of silence that had long kept these attacks hidden. Slowly, though, Sullivan found sisters willing to open up about their attacks, and others who could give perspective on why theyâd been kept secret for so long. Finally, he and New Delhi photographer Manish Swarup traveled to southern Indiaâs Catholic heartland to meet with nuns who had become pariahs in their community for defending a sister who accused a bishop of rape.
Sullivanâs powerful narrative attracted widespread attention. Accompanied by Swarupâs evocative photos, it was one of the APâs most-read stories for the week, with excellent reader engagement. AP clients specializing in Catholic affairs ran the story prominently.
The standout work by Sullivan and Swarup contributed to the weekâs remarkable body of work across the AP in covering abuse by clergy. For exposing long-held scandals in Indiaâs Catholic ministries, Sullivan and Swarup share APâs Best of the Week.
for dominant coverage of the eruption of the Anak Krakatau volcano just two days before Christmas, and the ensuing tsunami that hit Indonesia's Sunda Strait. AP was first to go live from the site â and stay exclusively live for a day â with the text story generating more than 200,000 page views in less than 24 hours. https://bit.ly/2s8lqQbhttps://bit.ly/2C39Zxs
for the exclusive story that international carmakers, including brands such as GM, Ford, Nissan, Tesla and VW, are handing over location data on the electric cars they sell in the country, allowing the Chinese government to track ownersâ movements.https://bit.ly/2Q7Zvahhttps://bit.ly/2Eisdie
for their in-depth look at the Chinese deployment of more than a million agents living in Uighur households â a program the government portrays as an effort to promote ethnic unity, though the Uighurs regard it as another attempt to quash their faith. https://bit.ly/2PaVIUb
for breaking news and follow-up coverage of General Motorsâ announcement of a massive restructuring that would include the loss of up to 14,000 jobs and the closure of five North American plants. https://bit.ly/2QfWpRf
for breaking news on retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OâConnorâs health and her withdrawal from public life. Greskoâs exclusive that OâConnor, the first female Supreme Court justice, was affected by short-term memory issues led to OâConnorâs announcement that she had dementia â and probably Alzheimerâs. https://bit.ly/2zi1Kwe
for reporting in all formats, live, the dramatic moments at the Mexico border when U.S. agents fired tear gas on hundreds of people in the migrant caravan, including children. The multiformat team produced powerful imagery and compelling text in real time that made APâs offering highly competitive.https://bit.ly/2DUhbhUhttps://bit.ly/2FPD5pvhttps://bit.ly/2E5wN3g
When a source told APâs chief medical reporter Marilynn Marchione that a Chinese researcher had edited the DNA of several human embryos and implanted two into a woman, their conversation launched an aggressive but delicate reporting effort by AP journalists in the U.S. and China. That reporting led to the APâs exclusive coverage of one of the most important and controversial claims in medical and science history. It was nothing less than an attempt to alter the trajectory of human heredity.
Science writer Christina Larson, videographer Emily Wang, researcher Fu Ting and photographer Mark Schiefelbein set out to interview the researcher and his colleagues in Shenzhen and Beijing, while Marchione and videographer Kathy Young worked the story from the U.S.
He's claim raised a laundry list of concerns. After talking with current and former colleagues and outside scientists, it became clear that his claim, while unverifiable, was plausible. AP knew it would be worthwhile reporting the claim, because the claim itself would be major scientific news. And it was â AP's exclusive on He's claim of the worldâs first gene-edited babies made headlines worldwide.
The response from readers, customers and other scientists was immediate and intense. The inventors of the gene-editing technology He used condemned the claim. U.S. and Chinese universities that He was affiliated with launched investigations, and more than 100 Chinese scientists called for a ban on work of this kind in China.
APâs reporting was credited or linked to by at least 44 media outlets and generated numerous downloads. At more than half a million page views it was by far the most read story on APNews for the week.
For responsibly breaking a story in all formats of a major scientific claim while exploring the ethical quandaries that Heâs research has raised, Marchione, Larson, Wang, Young, Ting and Schiefelbein earn AP's Best of the Week.
for obtaining an Education Department document showing that student loan servicer Navient put borrowers in costly repayment plans without telling them about potentially less expensive options. The exclusive was picked up in several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and made the front page of the New York Daily News. Navientâs stock fell more than 10 percent after Kenâs story was published, forcing the CEO to issue a letter to shareholders. One analyst firm, ValuAct, downgraded the stock following the story. https://bit.ly/2KmOnQv
for AP VoteCast, APâs new survey of the American electorate that debuted in the midterm elections, offering powerful insight into the reasons behind votersâ choices, robustly illustrated with all-formats content generated via text and graphic automation. https://bit.ly/2K206nA
for scoring an APNewsBreak on one of the most important details of how Olympic leaders in the United States are handling sexual abuse cases, finding that $2.2 million in key federal funds could not be used for the most pressing need of investigating any cases, with a backlog of more than 800 to be resolved. https://bit.ly/2TbqAqE
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
The idea was bold from its inception: Attempting to count dead and missing migrants worldwide.
After covering the outflow of refugees in the wake of the Islamic State's takeover in parts of Iraq last year, Paris enterprise writer Lori Hinnant noticed a lack of data on the migration. She set off on a mission to count the uncountable.
The yearlong effort to document lives that would otherwise go unnoticed proved extremely challenging, precisely because it was plowing such new ground. An AP team of more than a dozen people painstakingly compiled information that had never been put together before from international groups, forensic records, missing persons reports and death records, and went through data from thousands of interviews with migrants. The data came alive with individual stories of migrants, a challenge in itself.
The AP project found 56,800 dead and missing migrants since 2014, almost double the number currently put out by the United Nations, which focuses heavily on Europe and nearly excludes several other areas of the world. The report drew significant interest, despite the fact that it ran six days before the U.S. midterm elections.
For their ambitious project that established AP as a global authority on this issue, Hinnant, Istanbul visual journalist Bram Janssen and Cairo photographer Nariman El-Mofty share the Best of the Week award.
for comprehensive, innovative all-formats coverage of the Central American migrant caravan as it moved through Mexico, including strong photo galleries, insightful text narratives and drone video footage.https://bit.ly/2Pg7z8hhttps://bit.ly/2PNUqCV
for an APNewsBreak that uncovered an effort promoted by Sen. Bob Corker to jumpstart political dialogue in deeply polarized Venezuela. Deep source reporting by Goodman revealed secret efforts by Corkerâs office to bring a Harvard-trained conflict resolution expert to Caracas for closed-door workshops with representatives of Venezuelaâs socialist government and the opposition. https://bit.ly/2OMGg5m