tells the gripping story of a Miami nurse in the Intensive Care Unit who has dedicated himself to comforting more than a dozen COVID-19 patients in their last moments. Nurse Rublas Ruiz poignantly describes the all-too-common experience of patients far from loved ones as they draw their last breath, scared and alone except for doctors and nurses. https://bit.ly/3lkBKrg
While there is little dispute that Black voters pushed Joe Biden into the presidential winner's column, AP wanted to know: How big of a factor were they?
Race and ethnicity writers Kat Stafford and Aaron Morrison began reporting on what Black voters said they wanted Biden to deliver once in office. Using the voices they collected as the foundation of the story, Stafford and Morrison teamed with data journalist Angeliki Kastanis and polling journalist Hannah Fingerhut, who infused the piece with data and voter survey findings that bolstered the anecdotes with hard numbers.
Their collaboration put the AP days ahead of other news organizationsā pieces on Black votersā support of Biden. For resourceful and insightful reporting and analysis on a major factor in the 2020 election, the team of Stafford, Morrison, Kastanis and Fingerhut wins this weekās Best of the States award.
AP reporters from three different teams broke distinctive, significant stories on the continuing drug overdose crisis in the U.S., which has been overshadowed this year by the coronavirus pandemic:
— A state-level report showing that overdose deaths are on pace to reach an all-time high this year, and that overdoses increased after the virus began spreading in the U.S.— An accountability story on President Donald Trumpās handling of the opioid crisis, and how the issue has been overlooked in the presidential race.— A major scoop on a settlement between the federal government and Purdue Pharma, complete with details of criminal charges and the $8 billion settlement.
But the depth of coverage didnāt end with the major news beats. All three stories put victims at the center of the reporting.
For revealing stories that broke news and provided a powerful reminder of an ongoing epidemic that has contributed to the deaths of more than 470,000 Americans, Mike Stobbe, Adrian Sainz, Farnoush Amiri, Geoff Mulvihill, Meghan Hoyer and Michael Balsamo win this weekās Best of the States award.
secured exclusive international agency access to a hospital battling coronavirus and casualties in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.Chernov and Lovetsky had been on the front line of the disputed region within Azerbaijan for more than a week when they began to see increasing numbers of people becoming sick with the coronavirus. Repeated requests to document the hospitals and clinics were rebuffed until Chernov tracked down the regionās health minister to personally request access. The minister granted permission.Wearing full protective gear carried with them from previous reporting in the Ukraine, the pair visited the main hospital in Stepanakert and found terrible scenes of suffering as coronavirus patients mixed with the war-wounded ā while doctors and nurses continued to treat people despite suffering from the virus themselves. Their on-the-ground reporting was crafted into a powerful text story by Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and the story moved as cross-format agency exclusive the next day.https://bit.ly/3oCN57Ohttps://bit.ly/34BY9Kp
revealed in evocative text and photos the challenges of a severe COVID case and a long rehabilitation. Their compelling work was made possible by building trust and access with one Indiana man and his family. Murphy heard about Larry Brown, an Indianapolis man who finally came home after nearly 80 days in the hospital ā some 50 of those days on a ventilator ā and realized even local outlets had not done justice to the story.With expertise as a health writer, Murphy learned about the case and safely navigated spending time with Brown to see what his life is like now. Photojournalist Darron Cummings spent several days with the family, vividly capturing how Brown interacts with the kids, and how his hand therapy and neurology appointments work.Brown sometimes became apprehensive over the story; the AP pair earned his trust by explaining their plan and the importance of sharing his story of recovery and the long-term effects of COVID. https://bit.ly/3d6v1gOhttps://bit.ly/2FgorrM
delivered an ambitious all-formats package led by a compelling character profile to unravel the mystery behind Indiaās relatively low COVID-18 fatalities number, which experts say is an undercount. India has 5.4 million confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, but only 87,000 deaths. After numerous conversations with experts, health care officials and workers across the country, Ghosal and Saaliq offered a critical counternarrative, showing that India is not counting many deaths.
The story began with the personal narrative of Narayan Mitra, whose family said he wasnāt counted as a coronavirus victim by doctors who said the virus was āincidentalā since he had a pre-existing disease. The story also showed how Indian states were not complying with the Health Ministry guidelines to record all suspected virus deaths, including those who likely died of COVID-19 but werenāt tested for it.https://bit.ly/2Ev4tZZ
took readers inside an already-full COVID intensive care unit in Marseille as the French city became Europeās latest virus hotspot. Coleās single-handed multiformat reporting delivered the first visual documentation that Franceās resurgent infections aren't just numbers, but people struggling to survive.Cole showed both the drama of COVID intensive care and the daily reality for its staff amid this new wave ā and the personal touch of a nurse who took the time to brush a patientās hair and moisturize her skin.The impact was immediate ā the story saw immense use across Europe in all formats, as well as international markets.https://bit.ly/2FHO7NThttps://bit.ly/32y0WDo
As parents scramble to manage their own work and their kidsā remote learning during the pandemic, AP business reporters Alexandra Olson and Cathy Bussewitz wanted to know how that shift impacted the careers of mothers and fathers.
They dug into the data, finding that in order to tend to their children, working mothers were giving up their careers more so than working fathers. And they tapped into parenting networks to find families in this situation. What emerged was evidence of a trend that threatens decades of hard-fought gains by working women, who are still far from achieving labor force parity with men.
For timely reporting that documents a disturbing social and economic trend brought on by the pandemic, Olson and Bussewitz win this weekās Best of the States award.
Rarely does a Best of the Week award to go to a single AP journalist for work on a variety of stories. But the consistent excellence in the images of Barcelona-based Emilio Morenatti ā on stories large and small ā moved the judges to make an exception.
He started the week with a powerful story on migrants crossing a treacherous stretch of the Atlantic to the Canary Islands. And he finished with a remarkable set of photos on a COVID-19 patient, wheeled in his hospital bed to a promenade on the Barcelona waterfront. In between those stories he covered soccer star Lionel Messiās spat with Barcelona, daily life and more.
Each of his assignments reflected the highest standards of visual journalism and a level of emotional investment that few can match, earning Morenatti APās Best of the Week accolade.
Photographer Jae Hong wanted to tell the story of the nurses on the front lines of the battle against coronavirus. Not just the long, stressful hours caring for patients, but the fear they carry home of spreading the virus to their own families.
Hong found a Los Angeles-area hospital that would grant access to the COVID unit, then he and reporter Stefanie Dazio spent hours getting to know the nurses and asking to meet them at their homes for interviews and photos.
The result was an intimate, beautifully rendered look at the nurses, their dedication and their sacrifices. The story included a nurse who is a new mom, comforting a patientās family as the man took his last breaths.
For a poignant and revealing look at nursesā commitment to both their patients and their families during the pandemic, Hong and Dazio share this weekās Best of the States award.
crafted a tender, poignant photo package of nursing home residents in Spain hugging their relatives through protective sheets of plastic, his images almost instantly resonating among audiences worldwide. āOne of the most moving epidemic-era photos I have seen,ā wrote one Twitter user. Another called it āan ode to love and so heartbreaking. Terrific work.ā Multiple media organizations including The Guardian and CNN included Morenattiās work in their must-see photo collections of the week. https://bit.ly/2YK0iRg
used exclusive hospital access and character-driven all-formats storytelling to reveal the impact of the coronavirus on Imperial County, an often overlooked majority Latino community on the California-Mexico border, already affected poverty, air pollution, lack of health care and a border crossed by thousands daily. The teamās all-formats package, used widely across the country, evoked empathy and shed light on how such communities are exceptionally vulnerable to the virus.https://bit.ly/3gXdOYnhttps://bit.ly/31Re9Fw
Few places in America have been as hard hit by the pandemic as the Texas border, and the package by this all-formats team exposes the stark contrast between this part of the country and regions with greater resources.
With access to two hospitals overwhelmed by cases in the Rio Grande Valley, AP reporter Paul Weber, photographer Eric Gay and video journalist John Mone carefully documented stories of patients and staff, including a new mom in the maternity ward who unknowingly contracted the virus and had to be isolated from her newborn.
Weber wrote: āThe U.S. failure to contain the pandemic has been laid bare.ā
For a compelling and hard-to-report all-formats package, Weber, Gay and Mone win this weekās Best of the States award.
delivered impressive, carefully negotiated all-formats coverage as a leading U.S. COVID-19 vaccine candidate began final-round testing with volunteers in Binghamton, New York. The exclusive images ā photo and video ā were heavily played worldwide. The coverage also included an update on the original volunteers who received injections in Washington State in March.https://bit.ly/33ALS8Hhttps://bit.ly/3i9Jmue
National sports writer Eddie Pells was first approached in February by the mom of a player who said she had some concerns about abuses going on in the volleyball program at Oregon State.
Over the next five months, Pells conducted dozens of interviews both in and out of the program, and checked with experts to learn if volleyball coach Mark Barnard was over the line. Several athletes spoke to Pells, including a former OSU player who described how the coachās abusive practices contributed to a suicide attempt.
Pellsā exclusive led to immediate calls for the coachās firing and questions about the university officials who didnāt take action after hearing complaints.
For months of persistent and sensitive reporting despite uncertain prospects, resulting in an impressive story with impact, Pells wins this weekās Best of the States award.
made AP the first news organization to report that coronavirus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic, according to the United Nations.The story was sparked by a riveting set of photos and video by Mednick, showing an emaciated baby in Burkina Faso who had lost half her (already low) birth weight because her mother couldnāt feed her enough. Hinnant decided to tell the story of the worldwide increase in hunger through children, arranging with the United Nations to share the grim statistics with AP.The numbers went along with a global effort to talk to children, families, doctors and aid workers across five countries in various regions. In reporting on Yemen, AP went back to the family with a hungry baby whom we had spoken to previously ā only to find out that the baby had died.The widely used story struck a nerve with readers, some of whom reached out seeking to help the families.https://bit.ly/3kenos1https://bit.ly/2F2DJjv
Earmarked for deportation, the immigrant children, some mere toddlers, were parked in nondescript hotels ā out of sight and, the Trump administration thought, out of mind. But not out of reach of an Associated Press exclusive.
With an investigation based on source work, court records and witness accounts, immigration reporter Nomaan Merchant exposed how the Trump administration held children in hotels despite federal anti-trafficking laws and court rulings that mandate child-appropriate facilities.
Merchantās exclusive sparked outrage and accusations of child abuse. Five days later, the Trump administration said it would not expel 17 people, including children, detained at one Texas hotel, and the hotels pledged to stop allowing the practice.
For his investigative story that punctured layers of secrecy and changed the fortunes of all-but-invisible immigrant children, Merchant wins APās Best of the Week award.
pulled off a thoughtful, enterprising story about how the pandemic was playing out in Franceās South American territory, French Guiana. With revealing interviews, Pedram showed how French Guianaās outbreak exposed deep economic and racial inequality in the overseas department of about 300,000 people where poverty is rampant and health care is scarce. The story hit the two themes that are dominating news agendas among AP clients: the pandemic and racial inequality.In an AP interview, a representative of French Guianaās Indigenous communities explained how the appearance of white doctors sent from the French mainland caused alarm, not relief. āThere is still in the minds the time of colonization and the havoc wreaked by viruses brought by colonizers,ā Jean-Philippe Chambrier, a member of the Arawak tribe, told Pedram. āSo when they saw white people from the mainland, they made the link.āThe story included images by photojournalist Pierre Olivier Jay. https://bit.ly/2WRNPK1
turned a spotlight on the stress parents are feeling as they consider the reopening of schools and weigh competing concerns ā the health of their children, the burden of extended quarantine, the need to have children cared for as parents get back to work. Exploring the impact of these factors on working parents, Loller sorted through the nuanced implications for parents from New York to Texas as they react to the pivotal decisions being made by elected officials about when kids should return to school. https://bit.ly/2ZSnqO3
The AP story came to a startling conclusion: In much of the world, medical oxygen is expensive and hard to get ā a basic marker of inequality both between and within countries.
With the pandemic exposing this stark fact, AP looked primarily to Guinea to illustrate the global challenges of supplying bottled oxygen in the worldās least developed nations. Correspondents Lori Hinnant and Carley Petesch conducted scores of interviews with health officials and nongovernmental organizations around the world, while stringers Boubacar Diallo and Youssouf Bah reported from the heart of the pandemic in the West African nation.
Their all-formats package, including wrenching accounts of families directly affected by oxygen shortages, sparked immediate reaction, including a plan outlined by the World Health Organization.
For aggressive and resourceful coverage of lethal inequities in the supply of medical oxygen to the developing world, the team of Hinnant, Petesch, Diallo and Bah earns APās Best of the Week award.
