An immersive project harnesses AP’s reach and all-formats expertise across five continents.
A single story pitch grew into this ambitious six-part series produced and supported by more than 30 AP staffers across departments, formats and international borders.
Luis Andres Henao, a religion reporter who is particularly interested in stories that intersect with climate change, came up with the theme of sacred rivers and started looking into recent trends for a story pitch to religion editors David Crary and Holly Meyer. Crary reached out across the AP, consulting with climate director Peter Prengaman and others who recognized this as a unique idea that was bigger than any one story.
The result: Staffers on five continents collaborated over several months to execute the illuminating and alarming Sacred Rivers series, leveraging five formats to tell the winding tales of the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Columbia in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the Truful Truful and Pilmaiquen rivers in Chile, the Osun in Nigeria, the Bagmati in Nepal and Jordan’s eponymous river — the baptism site of Jesus. Some stories even carried a rare, coveted dateline: “ALONG THE [FEATURED] RIVER – .”
The lyrical stories, each with compelling images and presentation, engaged a range of audiences as they tackled the interplay of spirituality, religion, Indigenous culture, business practices, energy, environmental degradation — even geopolitical conflicts.
The lower reaches of the Whanganui River flow near the Kaiwhaiki settlement in New Zealand, June 15, 2022. Gerrard Albert, the lead negotiator for Whanganui Maori in getting the river’s personhood recognized by lawmakers, says the status is a legal construct more commonly used to give something like a corporation legal standing.
AP Photo / Brett Phibbs
Ngahuia Twomey-Waitai, 28, reaches into New Zealand's Whanganui River to ritually splash water on herself, June 17, 2022. “I tend to come down here quite often to cleanse myself, especially when I’m going through some big, huge changes in my life, regardless of them being good or bad,” she says. “The river always makes things better for me. … Just being down here gives me a huge smile and brings me at peace with myself and my life.”
AP Photo / Brett Phibbs
The Whanganui intake of a Genesis Energy hydroelectric program sits in the upper reaches of the Whanganui River in New Zealand's Whanganui National Park on June 16, 2022. Last year 81% of New Zealand's electricity came from renewable sources, thanks in large part to this and other big hydro schemes. It’s a positive story the government likes to tout, but today such projects would be unlikely to get regulatory approval because of their environmental toll.
AP Photo / Brett Phibbs
Tahi Nepia, a competitive paddler of a waka ama (outrigger canoe) and caretaker at a local Maori immersion school, carries his watercraft on the banks of New Zealand’s Whanganui River, June 14, 2022. Before venturing out on the river, he makes sure to first ask permission from his ancestors in a prayer, or karakia — it’s the top item on his safety list. He says his ancestors inhabit the river and each time he dips his paddle into the water, he touches them. “You are giving them a mihimihi, you are giving them a massage," Nepia says. "That’s how we see that river. It’s a part of us.”
AP Photo / Brett Phibbs
A devotee of the Osun River goddess throws a white cloth used for sacrifices into the sacred waters in Osogbo, Nigeria, May 29, 2022.
AP Photo / Sunday Alamba
The Osun River flows through the forest of the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, in Osogbo, Nigeria, May 30, 2022. The nonprofit advocacy group Urban Alert conducted a series of tests on the Osun in 2021 and found lead and mercury levels in the water at the grove that were, respectively, 1,000% and 2,000% above what's permissible under Nigerian standards.
AP Photo / Lekan Oyekanmi
Men take a break at an illegal mining site in Osogbo, Nigeria, May 31, 2022. The chief priest of the Osun River says illegal mining has polluted the sacred waterway, and he advises worshippers not to drink from it.
AP Photo / Sunday Alamba
Priestess Yeyerisa Abimbola speaks during an interview at the sacred Osun River in Osogbo, Nigeria, May 29, 2022. She has dedicated most of her 58 years on Earth to the Osun, a waterway in deeply religious Nigeria named for the river goddess of fertility. But with each passing day, she worries more and more about the river. “The problem we face now are those that mine by the river,” Abimbola said. “As you can see, the water has changed color.”
AP Photo / Sunday Alamba
Devotees of the Osun River goddess pray in Osogbo, Nigeria, May 29, 2022. They have little interaction with outsiders, devoting themselves fully to the goddess, whom they worship daily at a shrine tucked deep inside the grove.
AP Photo / Sunday Alamba
Worshippers of the Osun River goddess pray in Osogbo, Nigeria, May 30, 2022.
AP Photo / Sunday Alamba
The Bagmati River approaches Kathmandu, Nepal, May 24, 2022. Tainted by garbage and raw sewage that is dumped directly into the waterway, Nepal’s holiest river has deteriorated so greatly that today it is also the country’s most polluted, dramatically altering how the city of about 3 million interacts with the Bagmati on daily, cultural and spiritual levels.
AP Photo / Niranjan Shrestha
Girls look at the Bagmati River, swelled by monsoon rains, in Kathmandu, Nepal, July 27, 2022. A governmental committee set up to help clean the river is working on upstream dams where rainwater can be captured and stored during the monsoon season and released during the dry months to flush the river, moving waste downstream from Kathmandu.
AP Photo / Niranjan Shrestha
Men perform rituals on the banks of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal, May 24, 2022. Hindus flock to the Bagmati to worship at shrines and celebrate festivals, and women dip in the river to wash away sins. Visitors wade in during the festival of Chhath, praying to the sun god Surya. During Teej, married women come to pray for the health and prosperity of their husbands, and single women, to find a good one.
AP Photo / Niranjan Shrestha
A woman crosses over drainage pipes that flow into the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal, June 1, 2022. Mala Kharel, an executive member of a governmental committee set up to help clean the river, said that over the years the campaign has succeeded in collecting about 80% of the garbage along the riverbank. But the pickup efforts fall short, in part because frequent disruptions to trash collection services encourage more dumping.
AP Photo / Niranjan Shrestha
Mithu Lama rests near her house on the banks of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal, June 1, 2022. Born and raised next to the Bagmati, Lama recalls using its waters for cooking, bathing, washing and even drinking. Today that feels like a long-ago dream dashed by decades of dumping human waste and refuse, a dream she doesn’t expect to see realized again anytime soon.
AP Photo / Niranjan Shrestha
A cow crosses the Jordan River near Kibbutz Karkom in northern Israel, July 30, 2022. Symbolically and spiritually, the Jordan carries heavy significance to many as the place where Jesus is said to have been baptized. The river’s decline is intertwined with the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict and rivalries over precious water supplies in an area where so much is contested.
AP Photo / Oded Balilty
Members of the Eritrean and Ethiopian Christian Orthodox community from Tel Aviv participate in a baptismal ceremony in the waters of the Jordan River as part of the Orthodox Feast of the Epiphany at the Qasr al-Yahud baptismal site, near the West Bank town of Jericho, Jan. 19, 2018.
AP Photo / ODED BALILTY
Olga Bokkas, a U.S. visitor from Connecticut, immerses herself in the waters of the Jordan River at the Qasr al-Yahud baptismal site near the West Bank town of Jericho, July 31, 2022. The river’s dwindling waters are sluggish and a dull brownish green in this area.
AP Photo / Oded Balilty
People spend the day at the Jordan River near Kibbutz Kinneret in northern Israel, July 30, 2022.
AP Photo / Oded Balilty
People spend the day at the Jordan River near Kibbutz Kinneret in northern Israel, July 30, 2022. Only a tiny fraction of the river’s historical water flow now reaches its terminus in the Dead Sea.
AP Photo / Oded Balilty
Frances Marshall stands for a portrait, June 15, 2022, near the town of Whakaihuwhaka, New Zealand, where she runs the Rivertime Lodge on the banks of the Whanganui River. The moko kauae tattoo on her chin represents a woman's family, status and leadership within her community.
AP Photo / Brett Phibbs
A man throws a fish back into the Columbia River from the Whitefoot family scaffold in Bonneville, Ore., June 20, 2022. The waterway, which Natives call Nch’i-Wána, or “the great river,” has sustained Indigenous people in the region for millennia.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Locals and visitors cast fishing lines from the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River in Bonneville, Ore., June 21, 2022. From its headwaters in British Columbia where the Rocky Mountains crest, the Columbia River flows south into Washington state and then westward and into the Pacific Ocean at its mouth near Astoria, Ore.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Bronsco Jim Jr., mid-Columbia River chief, cleans the longhouse altar, a rectangle of Earth, with water before a ceremonial meal at the Celilo Village longhouse in Celilo Village, Ore., on the Columbia River, June 19, 2022. The tribe’s first foods are placed on the table in seasonal order before the meal begins.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
In Bonneville, Ore, June 20, 2022, Sandy Whitefoot stands with a dog at her home on an “in-lieu fishing site” — lands set aside by Congress to compensate tribes whose villages were inundated by dams. Many families at these sites live in trailers without restrooms, lights or drains.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Betty Jean Sutterlict slices, salts and hangs freshly caught salmon at the family’s campsite on the Columbia River in Bonneville, Ore., on June 21, 2022. For thousands of years, Native tribes in this area have relied on the Columbia River, or Nch’i-Wána, for its salmon and trout, and its surrounding areas for edible roots, medicinal herbs and berry bushes, which are used for food and rituals.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Wilbur Slockish Jr., a river chief of the Klickitat Band of the Yakama Nation, stands for a portrait near the Columbia River in Columbia Hills Historical State Park in Lyle, Wash., June 18, 2022. In the 1980s, Slockish served 20 months in federal prison on charges of illegally poaching salmon from the Columbia River. He says he went to prison to fight for his people’s right to practice their faith.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
The Pilmaiquen River is flanked on both banks by a hydroelectric plant construction site owned by the Norwegian company Statkraft in southern Chile, June 27, 2022. Many Mapuche communities near the Pilmaiquen, the Truful Truful River and elsewhere in the country’s water-rich south are fighting against hydroelectric plants that they see as desecrating nature and depriving Indigenous communities of essential energies that keep them from getting sick.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
Mapuche leader Victor Curin, a Conguillio National Park ranger, poses for a portrait near a waterfall at the headwaters of the Truful Truful River in the Andes of southern Chile, July 11, 2022. “Human beings feel superior to the space where they go, but for us Mapuche, I belong to the earth, the earth doesn’t belong to me,” he says.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
Mapuche leader and mediator Andres Antivil Alvarez, who works to ensure non-Natives understand how nature matters to his people, greets his horse Chayane in Rengalil, southern Chile, July 9, 2022. “The world is not loot. Everything that’s outside is also inside ourselves,” Alvarez says.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
Snow blankets the ground at the headwaters of the Truful Truful River in Conguillio National Park, southern Chile, July 11, 2022. Despite this winter’s abundant rain and snowfall, Chile is facing a worrisome climate change-driven drought that has compounded tensions over water use.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
Millaray Huichalaf, a Mapuche machi — healer and spiritual guide, laughs with her husband, Jaime Uribe Montiel, while preparing dinner at their home in Carimallin, southern Chile, June 28, 2022. Huichalaf was jailed for several months for leading an occupation of the site of a proposed hydroelectric plant. But she says she doesn’t fear prison because she managed to save the site, where she gathers medicinal herbs and performs sacred ceremonies.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
Women take part in a purification ritual at the culmination of the multiday celebration of We Tripantu, the Mapuche New Year, on the banks of the Pilmaiquen River in Carimallin, southern Chile, June 26, 2022. The rite is a “symbolic way to renew energy,” according to Millaray Huichalaf, a machi, or healer and spiritual guide.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
The sensitive portrayal of Indigenous groups’ core beliefs led members of these communities to express their gratitude for having their culture accurately and powerfully reflected in the news report. One local leader said the Columbia River story was the first time a news agency had featured Pacific Northwest “river circles,” their ancient religion’s connection to the river, raising hopes for community events inspired by the series.
The project resonated with AP’s audience and customers worldwide, both in reach and remarkable engagement. The stories in the six-part series each averaged more than 45,000 pageviews and usage by about 260 media outlets each across a broad range of markets from broadcast networks to international publications. Led by the Jordan River piece, several of the stories scored near the top for AP reader engagement, while the four videos in the series were seen by a global audience, from the Seoul Broadcasting System to France Media Monde to Weather Channel Group, among many others.
The on-the-ground teams that produced the all-formats content included:
— Nick Perry and freelancer Brett Phibbs in New Zealand
— Deepa Bharath and Jessie Wardarski in the Pacific Northwest
— Binaj Gurubacharya, Niranjan Shrestha and Upendra Mansingh in Nepal
— Mariam Fam, Oded Bilalty, Omar Akour and Nebi Qena in Jordan
— Chinedu Asadu, Sunday Alamba and Lekan Oyekanmi in Nigeria
— Giovanna Dell’Orto and Rodrigo Abd in Chile
Enric Marti, Maye-E Wong and Patrick Sison provided key photo editing and support, while Henao, Meyer, Crary and Peter Orsi were crucial to the text editing and planning. Also contributing were Chris Hulme for video, Samantha Shotzbarger for digital presentation, Justin Myers and Larry Fenn for interactive maps and Ron Vample for audio. Engagement managers Ashlee Schuppius and Gerry Kiernan, and the digital team’s Elise Ryan and Ed Medeles, ensured the project’s social promotion and audience reach; a panel discussion hosted by AP on Twitter Spaces drew 26,000 views.
For an enterprising, inspiring and unmatched creative collaboration that showcased AP journalism at its best, the Sacred Rivers project team is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
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