for gaining access to a confidential European Aviation Safety Agency report detailing the extent of risks to passenger planes posed by competing air traffic controls on the ethnically divided island of Cyprus.http://abcn.ws/2g182XZ
for an excellent example of cross-regional cooperation that uncovered how Pakistanâs poor Christian population has become a new target in Chinaâs market for foreign brides, leading to hundreds of girls being trafficked to China â a trade that has not been previously reported in international media. In the slums around Punjab, Gannon immersed herself in Pakistanâs Christian community, meeting a dozen brides and girls, and finding brokers and local priests complicit in the trade. Kang, meanwhile, worked the China side. With Wangâs help he eventually tracked down one husband in a small village, providing the other side of the story. The result was the first story on the subject beyond small stories in Pakistani media that didnât capture the full scope of the trade. https://bit.ly/2PSpNtDhttps://bit.ly/2VDl1q7
for an exclusive report on the escalating conflict between drug traffickers and authorities in southern Spain, including unprecedented interviews with gang members operating in one of Europeâs main entry points for hashish from North Africa. https://bit.ly/2HsiEMl
When police busted several massage parlors engaging in prostitution in Florida in February, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft drew all the attention, but hundreds of other men were also charged in what seemed like a new approach for Florida authorities.
AP Florida reporters Mike Schneider, Orlando, and Terry Spencer, West Palm Beach, seized on the Kraft-driven attention to dig into legal issues surrounding massage parlors and prostitution in Florida. With a deep dive into state records and a key interview with a local source, the pair landed an AP Exclusive that showed a change in strategy: Usually only low-level massage therapists were arrested. Owners were rarely charged and typically faced only fines and probation. Johns typically were not charged at all.
But the recent investigation had instead focused heavily on the possibility of widespread human trafficking. Several spa owners were charged with felonies, and authorities also charged 300 men accused of being patrons, including Kraft and the former president of Citigroup. The Martin County sheriff told Spencer that he wanted to shut down the sex-massage industry in part by targeting the demand side.
Strong play included prominent display in The Washington Post.
For their enterprising use of state records and source-building to find an AP Exclusive in a story that drew enormous global attention, Schneider and Spencer win this weekâs Best of States award.
The team â Todd Pitman, Esther Htusan and Jerry Harmer â had gone to Kachin state to report on the war between Kachin rebels and Myanmarâs army. Near the end of their trip, they decided to look into a story Htusan wanted to do on bride trafficking. The lead was vague and the team wasnât sure where it would take them.
But then, at a refugee camp, they met Marip Lu. And they knew immediately this was a story that had to be told.
With major contribution by Beijing staffers Shanshan Wang, Yanan Wang, Han Guan Ng and Dake Kang, they tell the harrowing tale of a woman who was kidnapped, held in captivity, raped and then forced to make the choice between freedom and her child. This powerful story, reported and told with great sensitivity, earns Beat of the Week.
They are crises that have received significant attention while playing out in different parts of the world, but the efforts of a trio of AP journalists have shed new light on both the perilous journey of migrants in the Mediterranean and the opioid epidemic in America.
The work of the journalists, Renata Brito aboard the Ocean Viking humanitarian ship sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, and Lindsay Whitehurst and Claire Galofaro in the U.S., tells the respective stories with a captivating clarity that resonated with readers and earned a rare tie in the Best of the Week contest. Each story demonstrated the profound storytelling power the AP can bring to complex stories with ingenuity, smart planning and teamwork.
Barcelona-based Brito wins for a story that sheâs still living, and telling, from the Ocean Viking. Embedded with a ship that last week rescued 50 migrants fleeing violence in Africa, her dispatch, âMigrant escaping Libya torture: We will go to Europe or die,â showed in stark terms the journey that for many has ended in death.
Galofaro and Whitehurst, meanwhile, share the win with a very different but no-less-gripping tale: âThe rise and fall of an Eagle Scoutâs deadly fentanyl empire,â about a millennial who built a million-dollar empire of mail-order fentanyl-laced pills.
For packages that brought new insight and perspective to heavily covered stories with significant global impact, Brito, Galofaro and Whitehurst win APâs Best of the Week honors.
for spending months tracking down an official list of 629 poor Pakistani girls and women trafficked as brides to China. The story provided the first concrete evidence of the scale of Chinaâs trafficking of brides, many of whom are sold into prostitution, physically and sexually abused, or forced to undergo fertility treatments. https://bit.ly/2M4QI4T
for overcoming restrictions imposed by the government to deliver compelling cross-format coverage of funeral rites and burials for some the 39 Vietnamese victims of human trafficking, whose bodies where discovered inside a truck in the England in October. Hau reported for text, captured stills and delivered live video.https://bit.ly/2OWlte9https://bit.ly/2RuutsBhttps://bit.ly/2rWCbkk
Houston newsman Frank Bajak headed to San Antonio with an overriding goal: Get an interview with a survivor of the immigrant-smuggling nightmare that claimed the lives of 10 people in the suffocating heat of a nearly sealed tractor-trailer.
The challenge was daunting. Survivors had been distributed among seven hospitals in the pre-dawn hours on the Sunday they were discovered in the truck outside a Walmart, with immigration and border patrol guards standing vigil outside their rooms.
Bajak's persistent, resourceful and ultimately successful effort to a secure that exclusive interview is recognized with this week's Best of the States prize.
for getting the raw FBI crime data to prove wrong the Maine governorâs allegation that blacks and Hispanics account for "90-plus percent" of heroin trafficking arrests in his state. http://nyti.ms/2cnuBG2
For several intense weeks, APâs all-formats Paris team had been contending with the violent street protests of the yellow vest movement. But a new threat to Franceâs peace suddenly arose when a man opened fire near the well-known Christmas market in Strasbourg.
On the evening of Dec. 11, the gunman shot and fatally wounded five people and injured a dozen more at the market. French authorities soon identified the suspect and said that the attack was being investigated as an act of terrorism. With that, France and Benelux Bureau Chief Angela Charlton and her all-formats crew quickly pivoted from the street protesters to focus on the attack, just as a massive manhunt was getting under way.
After AP confirmed that that police in Strasbourg had shot and killed the suspect on Dec. 13, Charlton scoured online white pages for potential witnesses, reaching a neighbor who, amazingly, was able to share images from directly across the street.
The exclusive video and photos that they negotiated were the result of teamwork and lessons learned from covering past attacks in identifying sources and deploying AP forces. And the close-up images told the story: the shooterâs body is seen slumped in a doorway as police and forensic officers move in.
The content, which had not yet appeared anywhere, was heavily used by broadcast and online clients around the world, both as video and for screengrabs.
For their resourceful, determined efforts to obtain exclusive images on this breaking story, the team of Angela Charlton, Alex Turnbull, Chris Noelting, Mstyslav Chernov, Jeff Schaeffer and Masha Macpherson receives the APâs Best of the Week award.
Californiaâs 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.
APâs 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 victimâs 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 didnât contribute, working unrelentingly from last weekâs elections and mass shooting straight into the wildfire.
For outstanding work, bolstered and supported by Californiaâs all-formats reporting staff and editors, Thompson, Flaccus, Elias, Berger, Locher and Banda share this AP's Best of the Week.
Just before midnight on the day after California staffers were up late covering the midterm election came reports of a shooting at a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Over the next 12 hours, as the scale of the carnage emerged, Sacramento correspondent Kathleen Ronayne, Washington-based reporters Mike Balsamo and Tami Abdollah, and photographer Mark Terrill and video journalist Krysta Fauria, both based in Los Angeles, combined to provide exclusive all-formats content for AP customers.
Despite the hour, Fauria and Terrill were on the scene within 90 minutes of the first reports coming in. Terrill made tight shots of the scene that no one else could match â his photos were used heavily by numerous outlets. Meanwhile, Fauria quickly set up a live shot, the first of four she would do over 12 hours at three locations. She also got APâs first interview from a survivor.
Reporter Ronayne, bleary-eyed from the long election night, provided the first live video of authorities searching the shooter's home, while Balsamo used a source to break the widely played news that the murder weapon was a handgun, not an assault weapon.
As other news organizations pulled photos of the gunman from social media, Balsamoâs Washington colleague â and fellow AP-Los Angeles alumnus â Tami Abdollah used a source to obtain a driverâs license photo that is believed to be the first and still perhaps the only rights-cleared image of the gunman.
For providing news, photos and video that others couldnât, Ronayne, Terrill, Balsamo, Abdollah and Fauria win this weekâs Best of the States award.
As the AP reported on the chaos and confusion surrounding the ever-changing list of missing people in the wake of California wildfire that killed at least 85 people, our reporters set out to try to track down more of those people and to show that they were findable, even though they continued to appear on the list of missing, and to show that hundreds were likely not really missing at all.
Dixie Singh, No. 158 on the list, was surprised to get a call from the AP, saying she was âvery much alive,â and all her friends and family knew it. San Francisco reporter Jocelyn Gecker tracked her down through a public records search by AP News and Information Center researcher Jennifer Farrar.
Meanwhile, Sacramento correspondent Kathleen Ronayne and Washington, D.C., reporter Juliet Linderman, who was in town for the week assisting on fire coverage, tracked down other stories of people who were findable â just not by the sheriffâs department.
The teamâs research and reporting laid out how easy it was to find some of the people and highlighted lapses in the sheriffâs record-keeping.
For their collaborative exclusive on a key lingering aspect of the deadly Camp Fire, the team of Gecker, Ronayne, Linderman and Farrar wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
Colleagues,
Welcome to Best of the Week.
This officially marks a rebirth of sorts for our weekly global staff contest, which celebrates some of the best work from around the AP world.
This weekâs winner celebrates a great team effort by colleagues in Latin America and beyond, as well as a really productive partnership with two other news organizations. Itâs creative and insightful work that breaks news and includes great visual journalism and innovative presentation. It rose to the top of an impressive field of entries.
Today, and each Friday going forward, the weekly winner is revealed at the Global News Meeting at 9:15 a.m. ET, which all AP staff are invited to attend.
Please join me in congratulating this weekâs honorees.
BC
Since the early days after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, the debate over the death toll has raged. The Trump administration seized on initial reports that fewer than 100 people had died, but those numbers belied the scope of the devastation. The storm left the island without electricity for months, hospitals and other key infrastructure shuttered, roads unpassable and pharmacies closed.
In June, Caribbean News Director Mike Weissenstein in Havana forged a partnership with Puerto Ricoâs Center for Investigative Journalism and U.S.-based news site Quartz to undertake the most comprehensive list to date of Puerto Ricans who died in the wake of the storm.
For the project, Weissenstein, San Juan newswoman Danica Coto, Washington-based data journalist Larry Fenn, New York-based reporter Claudia Torrens, Miami-based reporter Gisela Salomon, Washington-based reporters Luis Alonso and Ben Fox, as well as senior Havana-based producer Chris Gillette, Havana photographer Ramon Espinosa, Santo Domingo reporter Ezequiel Lopez Blanco, Mexico-based digital producer Dario Lopez, New York-based motion graphics producer Peter Hamlin and enterprise editor Raghuram Vadarevu, based in Phoenix, share the Best of the Week award-
As the opioid epidemic barrels into its third decade, itâs increasingly hard to find fresh ways to report on the problem. One group that has always been present, usually in the background of stories, are the parents, hundreds of thousands of them who desperately tried to save their children, then buried them anyway. Louisville, Kentucky-based national writer Claire Galofaro chose to focus on them, the survivors who have lost the most to the epidemic.
The project involved journalists across formats throughout the country â Jae Hong, Steven Senne, Pat Semansky, Jeff Roberson, Mark Humphrey, Rodrique Ngowi, Krysta Fauria, Dario Lopez, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Carla Johnson â teaming with Galofaro and enterprise editors Pauline Arrillaga, Jeannie Ohm, Raghu Vadarevu and Enric Marti to think creatively about how text, video, multimedia and photos could work together.
The result was two beautifully written narratives paired with photographs, an extensive Q&A about the epidemic, a full video story and three digital videos in which we hear three different mothers talking about the extreme lengths they went to to try and save their children.
The series struck a raw nerve â engagement was extraordinary: The main story was No. 1 on apnews.com the day it ran, and it appeared on newspaper front pages nationwide. A week later, news outlets were still using it. Hundreds of readers sent emails and tweets. More than one person said that they felt like they were sitting with these families in their living rooms.
For a cross-format effort so intimate, so devastating, it recaptured the attention of a nation that had been exhausted by stories about the opioid epidemic, the team that produced the Left Behind package wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
The wildfire that consumed Paradise, California, claimed 85 lives while virtually burning the town off the map. But beyond those facts lay a rich narrative of the individuals who perished while calling Paradise home.
AP San Francisco reporters Janie Har and Jocelyn Gecker set out to tell the stories of the victims of the deadly Paradise fire far more comprehensively than was possible in the immediate aftermath: Who were they? Where and when did they die? Did they even have a chance to flee?
To paint a picture of how the tragedy unfolded, the pair spent months tracking down family members â many of whom were wary â to talk about their loved ones, assuring them that APâs coverage would be more than a recitation of the grim facts. Interviews with California fire officials, a newly available simulation of the fireâs movement on the fateful morning and public records requests enabled AP to produce an interactive graphic giving the exact locations where people died and their approximate times of death.
The result was a riveting package that coupled intimate portraits of the victims with the circumstances of their death. Most never had a chance to flee their homes as the fast-moving fire barreled through.
The moving package was well-received by members throughout California and from coast-to-coast.
For carrying the Paradise story forward with enterprising, sensitive work that focused on the victimsâ narratives, Har and Gecker share this weekâs Best of the States award.
AP photographers often scramble to the scene of a news story before itâs clear what is happening.
That was the case on a beautiful Halloween afternoon last week when a call came in to the New York City bureau that there was a swarm of police activity near the APâs lower Manhattan headquarters. News Editor David Caruso ran to the windows and saw an unbroken string of police cars speeding south on the West Side Highway, going down the wrong side of the street. That was enough for him to scramble reporters, photographers and videographers out the door.
At the scene, AP photographer Bebeto Matthews slipped behind police lines and started walking up the street near the west side bike path. He noticed something white on the path and soon realized it was a body covered in a sheet, surrounded by crumpled bicycles and other debris. He began furiously taking pictures, called in what he saw to the desk and then ducked behind some construction equipment to start transmitting his photos on the spot.
Meanwhile, AP photographer Mark Lennihan and stringer photographers Craig Ruttle and Andres Kudacki had also rushed to the scene, making dramatic photos of what would become the worst terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11.
For strong breaking news work that put AP ahead and kept us there, Matthews, Lennihan, Ruttle and Kudacki win this weeksâ Best of the States Award.
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.
Among the human tragedies stemming from irregular migration, an Afghan boyâs drowning leapt out at Athens-based bureau chief Elena Becatoros when Greek authorities took the unprecedented step of charging his father with child endangerment, for embarking on the perilous journey from Turkey to Greece with his son.
Led by Becatoros, the APâs all-formats team in Athens tracked down the father, then spent weeks using formidable people skills and patience to gently persuade the grieving man to recount how his 5-year-old son slipped from his arms and drowned when the boat carrying migrants smashed against rocks and broke in two. The journalists also overcame the fatherâs initial refusal to appear in photos or on video, while another survivor added depth and detail too painful for the father to describe.
For their dogged pursuit and sensitive telling of this heart-wrenching story that puts human faces to the grim statistics on migration, the team of Becatoros, senior producer Theodora Tongas, video journalist Srdjan Nedeljkovic, freelancer Michalis Svarnias, chief photographer Thanassis Stavrakis and newsperson Derek Gatopoulos wins APâs Best of the Week honors.
