Alanna Durkin Richer, Michael Kunzelman and Lindsay Whitehurst planned extensively, assembled prep and then worked quickly when a jury handed down the verdict in the Proud Boys sedition trial. They beat competitors handily.
For months, the team sat through testimony in one of the most serious criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — the case against Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and top lieutenants of the far-right extremist group. As the verdict was about to come down, the group opened a Zoom for the reporters to coordinate with Durkin Richer, who would file the urgent series to the desk, along with Law Enforcement Editor Mike Balsamo and Washington desk supervisor Eileen Putman. With Kunzelman in the courtroom, Whitehurst, who was in an overflow media room, immediately relayed the verdict to Durkin Richer who tagged the prep to the Washington desk within seconds. AP’s alert hit the wire within a minute of the verdict being announced. The AP alert beat the competition significantly, by 15 minutes or more. The story was the most-read story on APNews that day, with more than 200,000 page views and numerous front pages.