for being first to report that Republican Congressman Lou Barletta, an early Trump supporter, will try to win the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Bob Casey. http://bit.ly/2uzDQI9
Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat has spent years covering the U.S.-Mexico border, building sources within the federal agencies that enforce the nation’s immigration laws and earning the respect of senior officials.
That source work paid off when Spagat scored an exclusive ride-along as federal agents executed what officials called the largest immigration action against an employer under Donald Trump’s presidency: An early-morning sweep of nearly 100 7-Eleven stories that targeted the stores’ owners, rather than the workers.
One U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said the operation was “a harbinger of what’s to come” for employers.
For his efforts to put AP ahead of the competition (some news organizations cited AP while their own reporters rushed to confirm the story), Spagat wins this week’s Beat of the Week prize.
for a widely played second installment of the series, Trump Country. The AP journalists got the people of Androscoggin County, Maine, a community revived by refugees, to open up about the anti-immigrant fervor that helped elect Donald Trump, who carried the county. https://apnews.com/7f2b534b80674596875980b9b6e701c...
for their story revealing that executive orders signed by President Trump just two weeks before Harvey struck Texas could make it more difficult for communities to rebuild infrastructure to make it better able to withstand another megastorm. http://bit.ly/2xPBZSB
for their extensive all-format coverage in Hanoi of the second Trump-Kim summit, capped with an agency exclusive on the North Korean foreign minister’s rare press briefing. Staffers scrambled on short notice to cover the near-midnight briefing in which the North Koreans disputed President Donald Trump’s claims on why the summit ended abruptly without an agreement. https://bit.ly/2UtHfGshttps://apnews.com/Trump-KimSummit
for his exclusive, wide-ranging interview with George Clooney, in which the actor commented on fatherhood, his new film about racism in America, and Donald Trump’s fitness to be president. http://bit.ly/2w84vNe
When Election Day arrived, just about everyone in politics had assumed for weeks that Hillary Clinton would soon be the next president. All it would take was California's trove of 55 electoral votes and a series of easy wins elsewhere to push her past the 270 she would need.
Not David Pace, Stephen Ohlemacher and AP's team of race callers and decision analysts.
They had prepared for months for all contingencies _ including a race that wasn't a blowout but a collection of close races that would demand deep analysis of AP's vote count, exit polls and the history of voting patterns state by state. To call the race for president before all others, and to do so with the unfailing accuracy the world expects from the AP on Election Day, would require excellence at calling those tight races that go deep into the night.
They did just that. And their call of the assumption-shattering result earns the Beat of the Week.
In any year, coverage of the Daytona 500 is a major undertaking that presents challenges. NASCAR’s biggest event stretches nearly two weeks and story planning begins a month in advance.
But this year the AP crew had to adjust on the fly as the story veered in multiple directions. First, President Donald Trump finalized a visit just 48 hours in advance. Then rain fell early in the race, eventually postponing the event until the following day. And finally, a lurid crash just short of the checkered flag resulted in a stunning finish followed by an agonizing wait for news on the condition of driver Ryan Newman.
The AP team never faltered, deftly handling everything Daytona threw at them with informed, precise reporting and outstanding images.
For constantly keeping the AP ahead during a wild weekend, writers Jenna Fryer, Dan Gelston and Mark Long, and photographers John Raoux and Chris O’Meara share this week’s Best of the States award.
for cross-format teamwork and exclusive coverage of alleged labor abuses at a shoe factory in China making Ivanka Trump-branded items. Kinetz and Ting managed to talk to workers who complained of overtime that stretched past midnight, steep production quotas and crude verbal and even physical abuse. Shih and Ting closely followed the story of three activists detained while investigating the plant, including getting exclusive photos and video when they were later released.
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for exclusively documenting how a Florida-based immigration firm that sought help from Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen seemed to get everything it wanted, unlike such companies as AT&T and Novartis, which got nothing but bad publicity and regrets. https://bit.ly/2tq33X9
For weeks, critics had complained that the Trump administration was putting political concerns ahead of scientific recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control.
A blockbuster AP scoop amplified those complaints: Reporters Jason Dearen and Mike Stobbe worked sources to reveal that President Donald Trump’s administration shelved the CDC’s guidelines containing step-by-step advice to authorities on how and when to reopen businesses and other public places during the pandemic.
The story dominated news media and was by far the best-performing story on AP News for the week. And in a follow-up exclusive, Dearen reported on documents showing the decision to withhold came from the highest levels of the White House, and that the Trump administration ordered key parts of the CDC guidelines fast-tracked for approval after the AP’s story appeared.
For a major scoop that resonated among customers and readers and finally brought to light the scientists’ suppressed guidelines for how the country should reopen, Dearen and Stobbe win AP’s Best of The Week award.
An AP Best of States mention in February about the hundreds of companies avoiding President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs raised questions about Trump’s $12 billion aid package to farmers hurt by the tariffs. What happened next shows how states can produce sharp, data-driven journalism – simply by calling on the data team for help.
AP filed Freedom of Information Act requests for U.S. Department of Agriculture data that was analyzed by Balint Szalai, a Hungarian investigative reporter embedded with AP’s data team, and Washington data team intern Riin Aljas.
Among their findings: Many big farming operations were legally collecting far more than the supposed caps on aid.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis reporter Steve Karnowski spoke to longtime USDA critics and interviewed farmers who defended taking the big checks, saying they didn’t even cover their losses under Trump’s trade war.
The Only-on-AP story ran on dozens of sites, and because the data and analysis were released to AP members in advance, many chose to localize their stories.
For sophisticated data analysis and on-the-ground reporting that shed light on a key consequences of trade policy, Karnowski, Szalai and Aljas share this week’s Best of the States award.
for a story of national interest about President Donald Trump’s administration, reported not from Washington but from the nation’s heartland. After the president released his latest budget proposal, Lieb revealed that Trump has failed to deliver on his promise of a $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan. He has so far been unable to persuade Congress to pass anything like that, even when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. https://bit.ly/2T38OrE
The shocking story exposed a serious human rights issue: The Chinese government has forced the use of IUDs, abortions and sterilization on members of China’s Muslim minority in an apparent effort to reduce its population.
The piece, which ran without a byline for security reasons, established that China is imposing birth control on Uighurs and other Muslims in a far more widespread and systematic way than previously known. The exclusive reporting drew on Uighur and Kazakh sources, research by a prominent China scholar and hours-long interviews with ex-detainees, family members and even a former detention camp instructor.
The story elicited a strong global response from government officials, news media and the public.
For uncovering another major chapter on the plight of the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China, the unidentified AP reporter wins this week’s Best of the Week award.
for breaking the news that the government would allow mining, drilling, grazing and recreation on lands around Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah that had been off limits. President Donald Trump downsized the protected area two years ago.
Impressed by AP’s fairness in coverage of the ongoing debate about managing public lands in the West, the Bureau of Land Management reached out to McCombs to share embargoed materials and the first interview by the region’s acting director ahead of the plan’s release. The APNewsBreak revealed that not only would the formerly protected lands be made available to a wide variety of uses but that those activities could have an adverse effect on the monument that is home to dramatic formations and vistas and is prime territory for paleontologists. https://bit.ly/2UafUcE
for determined source work that revealed President Donald Trump considering a dramatic expansion of his travel ban amid a renewed election-year focus on immigration. https://bit.ly/374a56n
used AP feeds from across the country to report exclusively that millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug touted by President Trump, were flowing from private companies and the federal stockpile to states and cities, despite warnings from doctors that the drug was unproven for treatment of COVID-19. https://bit.ly/2zJ7fYP
used dogged source work to report on COVID infections among guests at President Donald Trump’s election night party. Election night eventually stretched into five long days in AP’s Washington bureau, leaving political journalists exhausted, but Colvin wasn’t done. She circled back on the East Room party meant to celebrate a Trump victory that never came. Colvin described the event as a classic case of the White House flouting coronavirus guidelines that were drawing new scrutiny after chief of staff Mark Meadows turned out to be among the guests who had tested positive for COVID-19. The story required determined reporting because, as Colvin wrote in the story, “the White House has been increasingly secretive about outbreaks. Many White House and campaign officials, as well as those who attended the election watch party, were kept in the dark” about who had contracted the virus. But within hours, the story proved prophetic as word surfaced that two more prominent attendees, Housing Secretary Ben Carson and campaign adviser David Bossie had also tested positive. In coming days, even more guests at the event tested positive. https://bit.ly/2Hm7Une
Remember these images from the Inauguration: The new first couple dancing across a giant presidential seal at a ball? Faces in the crowd cheering or crying in the rain? The instant when Donald Trump took in the scene through an opening door before stepping onto the podium to become the 45th U.S. president?
Credit for those signature images, which appeared across the globe almost as they happened, goes to the skill and artistry of a hand-picked team of AP photographers and photo editors – and also to the cutting-edge, behind-the-scenes efforts of AP technicians working hand-in-hand with them to cover the intensely competitive event.
Their extraordinary work, a stream of 2,000 photos sent from daybreak until well after midnight, earns the Beat of the Week.
Homeland Security reporter Colleen Long and White House reporter Jill Colvin have repeatedly put the AP ahead on immigration coverage, but they outdid themselves during an intensely competitive week on the topic.
With President Donald Trump stepping up his threats to shut down the border amid a record surge of migrant families coming to the country, the pair dove into their source reporting, scoring three major scoops by the end of the week:
– Long and Colvin were first to report that Trump was contemplating naming a “border czar” to oversee immigration issues at the border. – They broke the news that the White House had withdrawn the nomination of its pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one day before he was scheduled to travel to the border with Trump. The scoop was so far ahead, and the news so perplexing, some in the Trump administration assumed it was a mistake. – A few days later, they delivered a smart piece pulling together the various actions surrounding Trump’s border troubles, suggesting that more personnel shakeups were expected. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned the next day.
The stories all received wide play by major outlets, and the weekender on Trump’s growing problem on the border scored in newspapers around the country, landing on the front page of Sunday papers in 20 states.
For their outstanding work to break multiple stories on a subject that dominated the news cycle, Long and Colvin win AP’s Best of the Week.
