for a smart analysis of census data that revealed the U.S. âhomework gapâ â the problem of students being wired at school but lacking internet at home. Members had access to the data analyzed by Fenn, many using it to localize their stories. https://bit.ly/2XNcPR8
Responding to APâs call for ambitious journalism in 2019, Holbrook âBertâ Mohr of the U.S. investigative team tossed out an idea during a brainstorming session: Authorities in Mississippi had found vapes containing fentanyl and synthetic marijuana in stores near Mohrâs home. What caught his eye was that the product was labeled as CBD.
That led to a collaboration by the Investigations and the Health and Science teams that would offer not just the exclusive results of laboratory testing — finding cheap and illegal synthetic marijuana instead of natural CBD in vapes and edibles — but also telling details about the people who bring dangerous products to market.
The âSpiked CBDâ package broke through. It was easily the top story on AP Mobile, and Mohrâs bylined story appeared on the front page of at least 23 newspapers; it was teased on the front of nearly 100 others.
For identifying and leading a collaborative investigative project that connected with customers and readers, Mohr receives this weekâs Best of the States award.
As allegations of sexual abuse by clergy have proliferated across the Catholic Church, millions of dollars in settlement money has been paid to victims. Some have received as much as $500,000 apiece.
Not La Jarvis D. Love.
At an IHOP in the Mississippi Delta, a white official from the Franciscan religious order offered to pay him just $15,000 to keep years of alleged abuse secret.
âHe said if I wanted more, I would have to get a lawyer and have my lawyer call his lawyer,â Love told The Associated Press. âWell, we donât have lawyers. We felt like we had to take what we could.â
The story, the latest in APâs investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church, revealed deals struck with two black men for abuse they said happened in grade school that represent far lower amounts than what other clergy abuse survivors have received. It also revealed the men had been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, which had long been banned by U.S. Catholic leaders.
Despite the challenges, the team â investigative reporter Mike Rezendes, photographer Maye-E-Wong, video journalist Sarah Blake Morgan, digital storytelling producer Samantha Shotzbarger and researcher Randy Herschaft â produced extraordinary work. Herschaft discovered several critical threads that showed an alleged abuser was working with children even after the church had known about one of the menâs allegations.
For their sensitive work on a complex, emotional and previously untold story, the team of Rezendes, Morgan, Wong, Shotzbarger and Herschaft win this weekâs Best of the States.
for documenting how the kinds of jobs Americans long enjoyed â permanent positions with stability, bonuses, pensions, benefits and opportunities to move up â have become rarer, which is why many donât feel much like beneficiaries of whatâs now the longest economic expansion on record. Drawing on economic research, government data and interviews with workers, Smith sketched a picture of lagging wages, eroding benefits and demands that employees do more without more pay. Her reporting concluded that the loyalty and security many say they once felt from their employers have diminished, and with it a measure of their satisfaction. https://bit.ly/2P914oj
Jocelyn Geckerâs bombshell investigation of sexual harassment allegations against opera superstar Placido Domingo started with a song.
San Francisco-based Gecker was at a party about 18 months ago when she noticed the beautiful voice of the woman next to her singing âHappy Birthday,â and complimented her. The woman was a former opera singer who confided that the industry had a dark underbelly, offering her assessment that âPlacido Domingo is the Bill Cosby of the opera world.â
The discussion sparked months of work by Gecker to publicly reveal what many said had been an open secret in the opera world. In all, Gecker would find nine women who accused Domingo of sexual harassment and a half-dozen more who said the star made them uncomfortable. Getting people to go on the record proved challenging, but a breakthrough came when one of Domingoâs accusers agreed to tell her story on camera. The resulting 5,200-word story â and Domingoâs response â commanded instant attention and heavy engagement in global media.
For finding a major international story in an unlikely setting, and her care in dealing with sources while reporting tenaciously on a sensitive topic, Gecker earns APâs Best of the Week honors.
for a forward-looking piece amid the blizzard of gun-related news that followed the most recent mass shootings, looking at how the reshaping of the federal courts under President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate could undermine strict gun-control laws passed by Democratic-leaning states. That scenario is already playing out in California, where a Republican-appointed federal judge has blocked a state law limiting the number of rounds allowed in ammunition magazines. Thompsonâs story, turned around in a day and a half in the wake of the latest shootings, resonated with readers and editors, scoring heavy play online and in print. https://bit.ly/2KDN1BC
for reporting that the gunman in the Dayton, Ohio, shooting that killed nine people had significant red flags in his background.Following up on a thinly sourced local news report that Ohio shooter Connor Betts had a hit list in high school, Biesecker and Dunklin began calling dozens of former classmates, particularly those who may have had a chance of knowing Betts well. They struck paydirt with a former track teammate and a classmate who gave firsthand accounts of knowing not only about the hit list of people Betts wanted to kill, but also a rape list of girls he wanted to sexually assault. Both students had knowledge of separate high school suspensions of Betts, and with help from Smyth and others on the ground in Dayton, AP found more people who could confirm the accounts. https://bit.ly/2YIUEQg
Itâs a story so dangerous that the journalists who covered it are still checking their temperatures regulary to ensure that theyâre not infected with one of the worldâs most lethal diseases. Yet APâs all-formats journalists helped tell intimate stories about the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history.
The team â Johannesburg Chief Photographer Jerome Delay, West Africa Bureau Chief Krista Larson, Istanbul video journalist Bram Janssen and Congo stringer Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro â had been planning since April to report on the outbreak in Congo, a journey complicated not only by risk of the disease but also the threat of rebel attacks. And their story took on even greater urgency when the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a world health emergency.
Readers, and editors, around the world took notice as the team produced a series of compelling stories from the epicenter of the outbreak.
For careful planning and execution of multiformat coverage that brought the frightening outbreak to a deeply personal level, Larson, Delay, Janssen and Kudra win APâs Best of the Week.
for a nuanced story of a community coming together to support their local newspaper, the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, in the year since a mass shooting killed five people at the paper. The paperâs surviving staff are recommitted to covering the community, using their craft to work through their trauma, while subscriptions have surged and random readers hug reporters on the job, Witte reported. https://bit.ly/2RPdkrw
for accompanying D-Day survivor Ray Lambert, 98, to Normandy on the 75th anniversary of the battle, providing a rich, emotion-laden personal travel diary as the former Army medic made what is likely his last trip back to the site of the June 6 landings. Working in all formats, Breed captured Lambertâs activities, from packing his bags to his triumphant return to France. The four-part video series included intimate moments such as a visit with school children in a local village and a trip to the shores of Omaha Beach, where Lambert had saved numerous comrades. And on the day of the anniversary, President Trump singled out Lambert in his D-Day speech at the U.S. cemetery.https://bit.ly/2ZkkSF6https://bit.ly/2XONru8
for two stories about the emotional toll the Parkland massacre has taken on the community over the past year, including the saga of two women who embraced each other in an iconic photo on the day of the school shootings, but now no longer speak to each other. https://bit.ly/2SiQnvshttps://bit.ly/2T6icvv
for a moving story about the first high school graduation for students of Paradise, California, since last yearâs monstrous wildfire that left their town in ashes and killed 85 people. Of the schoolâs 980 students, about 900 lost their homes.https://bit.ly/2IEeIJnhttps://bit.ly/2MNq5Eg
â... Due to the distractions caused by the unfounded AP article last week, I am stepping down as President of YOUR college effective immediately.â
Rear Admiral Jeffrey Harley, head of the elite U.S. Naval War College, pushed the button on that all-staff missive Monday after the Navy announced it was reassigning him in the wake of exclusive reporting by Jennifer McDermott and Michelle R. Smith â reporting that produced two APNewsBreaks in 72 hours.
Their first NewsBreak moved Friday, confirming the military was investigating allegations that Harley spent excessively, abused his hiring authority and otherwise behaved inappropriately, including keeping a margarita machine in his office. Three days later, the AP team was first again with word that the Navy was removing Harley from his post pending the outcome of its probe.
Both stories gained huge traction with customers and on social media. The scoops by McDermottâs and Smith were âjust the tip of the iceberg,â one source said, and theyâve since led to new tips.
For dogged and diligent reporting that exposed questionable leadership at the heart of the Navyâs brain trust, McDermott and Smith win this weekâs Best of the States prize.
After a gunman opened fire in a Southern California synagogue on Passover, killing a woman and wounding a man, his 8-year-old niece and the rabbi leading the service, the inevitable question was asked: Could anything have been done to stop the violence?
Reporters Don Thompson and Adam Beam in Sacramento and Julie Watson in San Diego combined to report exclusively that the synagogue itself had recognized security deficiencies and even received a state grant to address them.
But it hadnât spent the money, the AP team revealed.
For their exclusive follow-up to a crime that generated global attention, Thompson, Watson and Beam win this weekâs Best of the States.
Itâs no secret that the NCAA college basketball tournament is big business. But just how big, and how has the pie been divided?
The New York-based team of college sports reporter Ralph Russo and data journalist Larry Fenn took on that reporting and accounting challenge, making AP the first news organization to document who received more than $3 billion in March Madness payouts over two decades.
Complicating their task was the fact that the NCAA referred to payments with a complex âunitâ formula, while 32 different athletic conferences had their own rules for distributing the funds back to schools. Russo peppered the NCAA with questions, ultimately getting detailed numbers back to 1997. Fenn parsed tournament results to quantify wins and bids that qualified for payment under the system.
The work led to several stories by Russo and his colleagues in Sports detailing the money side of the annual tournament, including diminishing shares for smaller conferences, an explainer on the system itself and the value of the final invitations to the field. Fenn also collaborated on a data distribution for members doing their own stories focused on individual schools, as well as a robust interactive.
The AP-exclusive stories drew extensive play in the heat of March Madness, showcasing the power of AP when we think ambitiously and outside the box, even around annual events already in the glare of the media spotlight. For their outstanding work, Russo and Fenn win APâs Best of the Week.
Police videos of officers shooting unarmed black men have sparked angry protests in Chicago, Sacramento and other U.S. cities. But APâs Ryan Foley wondered: Is it the norm for departments to release footage from body-worn and dashboard cameras?
Foley, based in Iowa City, Iowa, a member of APâs state government team, investigated and found that many departments routinely deny public access to their videos of officer-involved shootings and other uses of force.
Foley filed open records requests related to roughly 20 recent use-of-force incidents in a dozen states. His letters were met with denial after denial as police departments routinely cited a broad exemption to state open records laws: They claimed that releasing the video would undermine an ongoing investigation. But critics say the exemption is often misapplied to keep embarrassing or compromising video footage from public view.
To tell the story visually, Central Region video journalist Noreen Nasir dug through APâs archives to highlight the moments and emotions that followed the deaths of unarmed black men, including the fatal police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. She also interviewed a woman in North Dakota whose brother died after being shot in the back of the head during a struggle with police, adding a crucial perspective to the video.
At the same time, Panagiotis Mouzakis, multimedia animation producer in London, used the many denial letters Foley had collected to create a video graphic that was incorporated into Nasirâs video, and Beat Team visuals editor Alina Hartounian developed a social plan that helped the package find a huge audience.
For shining a light on how police departments continue to withhold visual evidence and for devising creative ways to illustrate the story, Foley, Nassir and Mouzakis share this weekâs Best of the States award.
AP staffers are often called the âMarines of journalism.â First in, last out.
Our small New Zealand team of Mark Baker and Nick Perry showed what that looks like as they responded to horrific mass shootings at two mosques. Their swift response securing early, definitive images and witness accounts laid the foundation for the APâs dominant, agenda-setting coverage of the tragedy in the hours and days that followed.
Baker, the Southeast Asia photo editor known widely as âCrusty,â lives in Christchurch, where the attack happened. He heard radio reports of a possible shooting at a mosque and quickly alerted Perry, the Wellington correspondent, to get words on the wire. Baker headed immediately to the scene, where his early images of survivors became the definitive shots of the tragedy.
Back in Wellington, Perry aggressively filed on breaking developments before going to Christchurch, where he scored another major win for AP by interviewing an Afghan refugee who would be hailed as a hero for confronting the gunman, likely preventing more deaths.
Asia quickly deployed reinforcements, with cross-format teams ensuring AP kept up its advantage on the ground while colleagues from afar kept the story fresh as Asia slept.
For their quick response that showcased APâs fundamental advantage when news breaks across the world, Baker and Perry share APâs Best of the Week award.
for breaking two completely unrelated Texas scoops: that the University of Texas had fired former star quarterback Vince Young from his part-time job as an ambassador and development officer for the school, and for reporting that after barely three months after Democrats showed signs of cracking Republican dominance in state elections, Gov. Greg Abbott used the power of his office to appoint GOP judges who had been rejected by voters to new positions on the bench.https://bit.ly/2J6ZNe3https://bit.ly/2TB5fe3
for a powerful and sensitively executed photo-driven project that captures the spirit and resilience of a desperately poor family, keeping their 7-year-old son in school against all odds.https://bit.ly/2J9gmWhttps://bit.ly/2JaTRB3
Thereâs always a better story behind a statistic.
Chicagoâs homicide rate is one of the worst in the United States. By digging into one drive-by shooting, Chicago-based legal affairs reporter Michael Tarm and Houston-based video journalist John Mone found out how one victimâs life had inspired a generation of gang territory storytellers.
Telling it took a lot of sourcework.
Tarm had already been working on a story about social media and gangs, and heâd watched a few of Zack Stonerâs reports on Chicago street gangs and rappers on his ZackTV1 YouTube channel. When reports surfaced that Stoner was gunned down, Tarm began to look deeper, stumbling across a wider story â about a new brand of gutsy gangland reporters in Chicago and elsewhere who have avid followers on YouTube.
Getting access to the storytellers was tough, but eventually the name of Texas-based reporter Shawn Cotton emerged. Cotton was eager to discuss Stoner, his impact on the genre and the effect his killing had on him and others. Mone rode along with Cotton to the Meadow Brook subdivision in Fort Worth, dubbed âMurder Brookâ by some of the kids on the street where Cotton filmed.
The multi-platform work played prominently with impressive reader engagement.
For relentless sourcework to show how a generation of storytellers is impacting its communities, Tarm and Mone win this weekâs Best of the States.
