for reporting on Twitter expanding its purge of questionable accounts in recent months, ever since revelations that Russian agents and other malicious types manipulated it during the 2016 election. https://bit.ly/2O1UtY6
teamed up with a cast of AP colleagues to deliver scoop after scoop on Elon Muskâs tumultuous first week at Twitter. AP prevailed by placing a premium on one defining element of the storyline: How the platform is changing and how that affects regular people and their discourse on the platform.After Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, the Technology team knew that the first week would be critical to determining what the celebrity CEO intended for the platform. As the company veered into uncharted territory, the journalists worked sources, aggressively but responsibly reporting what AP could see and confirm, ensuring reliable, fact-based coverage.From the chaotic layoffs to the fire sale on blue check marks to a sweeping look at Muskâs debut as Twitter CEO, the AP team broke news, setting the standard for coverage of the social media giant.Read more
for an exclusive AP analysis of deleted tweets that revealed that disguised Russian agents worked to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump while refocusing online criticism toward Hillary Clinton during last yearâs U.S. presidential campaign.http://bit.ly/2zJMDhKhttp://bit.ly/2zJAGbChttp://bit.ly/2hx1ssO
for an exclusive interview, after months of negotiations with the club, with Josep Bartomeu, president of FC Barcelona. The story, in which Bartomeu talks about life after Lionel Messi, was prominently picked up internationally and by Spanish media. https://bit.ly/2pp6wqY
In February, Arkansas announced a series of April executions that, if carried out, would make history in the United States: Over an 11-day period, the state would put to death eight inmates â two each on four days. No state had performed so many executions in such a short time since the Supreme Court re-instated the death penalty in 1976.
And Arkansas, which had not carried out an execution since 2005, had a curious justification for the expedited timetable: the supply of one of its three execution drugs was expiring at the end of the month. Officials were not confident they could obtain more.
Weeks before the first planned execution, a team of AP journalists in Arkansas and beyond set out to both chronicle the executions and offer deep and varied enterprise that broke news. Their work earns this week's Best of States award.
for a series of nearly 20 videos from the Tour de France, using iPhone and GoPro to create short-form, customer-ready products. The videos drove traffic to their comprehensive text coverage of the race itself as well as âTaste of the Tour,â their daily series of entertaining, informative and entirely exclusive cross-format stories exploring the people, places, cuisine and hidden tales in the regions crossed by the Tour. They shot video and interviews in the early morning, before starting long days covering each stage, then edited their video stories in the car as they drove hundreds of miles to the stage finish, where they then leapt back into race coverage. On Twitter alone, the video series racked up close to 300,000 views, more than covering the pairâs modest wine tab.https://bit.ly/2yvemQshttps://bit.ly/2Ktu58Dhttps://bit.ly/2SUr7O2https://bit.ly/2K9dvMihttps://bit.ly/2YvHXbj
Health writer Tom Murphy was talking with an advocacy group for patients with Lou Gehrigâs disease about obstacles in caregiving, when he heard something arresting: Often, itâs children who provide the care.
With that spark, Murphy dug into the research and found that millions of school-aged children across the country are doing heavy-duty caregiving tasks. He and video journalist Shelby Lum then worked for weeks to ensure they could fully show what a family goes through every day. They discovered a family that was not only cooperative but compelling: The Kotiya/Pandya family welcomed Murphy, Lum and photographer Mat Otero into their Texas home where the team shadowed the familyâs two young caregivers.
With that access, the trio produced a remarkably rich, engaging all-formats package that hooked readers and viewers.
For shining a delicate but bright light on the heart-wrenching reality of grade schoolers having to be as adept with a breathing machine as with Legos, the team of Murphy, Lum and Otero is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
took a deep look into a diversity issue in womenâs college basketball that has been mostly overlooked â of the 65 Power Five head coaches, only 13 are Black women.Walker, who is helping cover the tournament remotely, stepped away from the action on the court to highlight the low number of Black women in the top coaching jobs. She interviewed coaches and administrators to get answers as to why so few and what needs to happen for that to change. And she led off the story with a telling anecdote -- when Dawn Staley and Joni Taylor met up in the Southeastern Conference Championship, it was the first time in 41 years that teams led by Black women had faced off in a tournament championship. After the story was published, a Vanderbilt official summed up the responses to the article in a note to Teresa saying, âCrushed it!â https://bit.ly/3wfqMc3
Over the course of several months, more than 30 AP staffers across five continents teamed up to execute the illuminating and alarming six-part Sacred Rivers series. The ambitious project leveraged all-formats skills to tell lyrical stories, each with compelling images and presentation, engaging audiences with the intersection of spirituality, religion, Indigenous culture, business practices, energy, environmental degradation â even geopolitical conflicts.
The series resonated with APâs readers and customers worldwide.
For an enterprising, inspiring and unmatched creative collaboration that showcased AP journalism at its best, the Sacred Rivers project team is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
Brian Madeux made medical history on Nov. 13 when he became the first person to have his genes edited inside his body in an attempt to cure a genetic disease. And the Associated Press was the only news organization to document this experiment, which could advance medicine by giving a potentially safer, more precise and permanent way to do gene therapy.
Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione got word earlier this year that the gene editing work would soon begin. She negotiated exclusive rights to the story, giving AP sole access to the patient, doctors and scientists involved. She spent six months reporting the story, teaming with journalists in three cities through several false starts and twists and turns to deliver an all-formats package.
For their enterprising work on a groundbreaking story, the team of Marchione, Kathy Young, Terry Chea, Eric Risberg and Marshall Ritzel wins Beat of the Week.
Whatâs lost when a newspaper dies? And how do you tell the story of this slow disaster happening in front of everyoneâs eyes and still make the world sit up and take notice?
For reporters Dave Bauder and David Lieb, the answer was by focusing on the residents of one small town as they explained the death of local journalism in an authentic, vivid and compelling way.
Itâs a story thatâs happened repeatedly across the country, with 1,400 cities or towns losing newspapers in the last 15 years. The aftermath of the loss of the Daily Guide in Waynesville, Missouri, was richly told by a multiformat team of text, video and photo journalists as the centerpiece story for âFading Light,â the APâs Sunshine Week package on the decline of local news.
New York-based media reporter Bauder and Lieb, a member of the state government team based in Missouriâs capitol, spent several days in Waynesville and its twin city, St. Robert, reporting the story. Denver video journalist Peter Banda and Kansas City photographer Orlin Wagner worked closely with them to shoot visuals, while Alina Hartounian, the multiformat coordinator for the U.S. beat teams, created social videos that drove readers to the story. Bauder also secured an interview with executives at the company that shuttered the Daily Guide.
The package received incredible attention and sparked discussion online. Bauder and Liebâs text story has been viewed nearly 120,000 times with high engagement, it has landed on nearly 30 front pages, and has been cited in several influential media reports.
For masterful work shining a light on a problem that has left whole communities less informed, Bauder, Lieb, Banda, Wagner and Hartounian win APâs Best of the Week award.
While books and movies have shed light on the world of big-time amateur basketball, no one has published stories along the way â until now. With the first story in a series, Detroit sportswriter Larry Lage and others in a team from Sports established AP as the authority on news about Emoni Bates, a 13-year-old who stands at 6-foot-7, just started the eighth grade and is primed to be the biggest basketball prospect in the United States. The goal is to understand the high-pressure world of college basketball recruiting by following a single promising playerâs path.
Lage, hybrid video journalist Mike Householder and photographer Paul Sancya of Detroit reported with the specific intent of presenting the stories in multiple ways, then worked with Chicago sports writer Jim Litke and east regional sports editor Oskar Garcia to craft the hub presentation of the text, photos, video and audio.
For their strong, revealing work, Lage, Householder, Sancya and Litke share this weekâs Best of the States prize.
After a New Jersey commuter train crashed into the Hoboken station, killing one woman and injuring more than 100 people, it became clear that there would be no quick answer to what caused the accident. But that didnât stop East Social Media Editor Michael Sisak from wanting to know more about the deeper issues plaguing New Jersey Transit.
Sisak began diving into federal data and, working with New York-based freelancer Michael Balsamo and Newark reporter David Porter, discovered that the transit agency had paid more in fines for safety violations than any other commuter railroad in the country over the past five years. It also had a significantly higher accident rate than the rest of the nationâs 10 largest commuter railroads.
for their cross-format package on Dakota Access pipeline protesters defiantly digging in for the winter, including a 360-degree video of protesters holding a water ceremony, photo galleries, satellite images and text.
Text: http://apne.ws/2h3nsKj
Video: http://apne.ws/2gUACMo
for a multiplatform breaking news package when former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick held a workout for fans. Kaepernick had been scheduled for an NFL-arranged workout at the Atlanta Falcons training facility, but the quarterback switched signals at the last minute, working out at a high school 60 miles away. https://bit.ly/2r9x9AC
AP national writer Hillel Italie took a call Thursday evening from a longtime source with an unexpected tip: Groundbreaking actress Cicely Tyson, known for her roles playing strong, fiercely dignified Black women, was dead.
Italie set off to get the news on the wire quickly, while also alerting colleagues. That included entertainment writer Mark Kennedy who had met Tyson years earlier. Kennedy had decided that when the time came, the AP obituary would have to capture the breadth and achievement of her life and career. And he had prepared just that.
The AP story moved at least 15 minutes before other outlets, earning more than 265,000 page views and front page headlines.
Celebrity obituaries are intensely competitive; Italie and Kennedy kept AP well in front, through source work, commitment and solid preparation. For that, they win APâs Best of the Week award.
spent a chunk of Election Day documenting George Floydâs brother in New York.With racial justice a central issue in the election, race and ethnicity reporter Morrison thought it fitting to tell a story through the lens of someone who lost a loved one to police violence. He had met Terrence Floyd, the younger sibling of George Floyd, in Minneapolis over the summer at the spot where a white police officer pressed his knee into Floydâs neck for nearly eight minutes. Terrence, who lives in New York, agreed to let Morrison shadow him exclusively as he rode around the city in an SUV calling on a loudspeaker for people to vote, and later while waiting for election results at a watch party. At one point Terrence chanted âDon't forget to vote!â in rhythm with musicians outside a Brooklyn museum, a moment captured by Morrison, photographer Franklin and video journalist Shaffrey.https://bit.ly/38FgXe2https://bit.ly/3kqmQyb
Itâs a story of two churches in rural Missouri, only 30 miles apart — and worlds apart.
One congregation is mostly white, while the other offers services in five languages with members from around the world. The pandemic has united them, with pastors meeting to support each other, share ideas and figure out how to continue ministering to this region hit disproportionately by the coronavirus.
The team of national writer David Crary, youth and religion reporter Luis Andres Henao and video journalist Jessie Wardarski earned the trust of residents to produce an intimate all-formats story, revealing diverse Midwestern communities that aren't famous but are integral to the nationâs identity.
For compelling coverage of communities united in adversity and navigating with faith, the team of Crary, Henao and Wardarski wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
For the third installment of their groundbreaking investigation into labor abuse in Asiaâs palm oil industry, reporters Robin McDowell and Margie Mason linked child labor to the supply chains of the makers of popular cereals, candies and ice creams, including KitKats, Oreos and Capân Crunch. They also traced the oil to that most American treat: Girl Scout cookies.
Joined by photographers Binsar Bakkara and Mark Humphrey, and video journalist Allen Breed, their reporting found that some tens of thousands of children toil in the palm fields, some kept from school and forced to work for free or for little pay. Some are trafficked.
The framing of the story — through the eyes of a young girl in the fields in Indonesia and a Tennessee Girl Scout campaigning to have palm oil removed from the cookies — resonated with readers; reaction on social media led the Girl Scouts to address the issue with their suppliers.
For shedding unprecedented light on the children toiling in Southeast Asiaâs palm oil fields, and connecting the abusive practice to major consumer brands, McDowell, Mason, Bakkara, Breed and Humphrey share APâs Best of the Week honors for the week of Dec. 28.
delivered a unique story on the people directly affected by the high-stakes trade talks reaching a crescendo in Brussels. While competitive news organizations focused on the post-Brexit political wrangling, AP took an exclusive look at struggling French fishing crews and overwhelmed British truck drivers stuck in traffic jams at the English Channel. Thanks to years of source building in the region, the journalists were able to identify subjects that provided strong visuals, capturing the attention of AP clients and the public.https://bit.ly/382rj5Ghttps://bit.ly/3gQud1Fhttps://bit.ly/387pGnn
