Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Resourceful reporting, legal challenge reveal FBI going for the gold

has been breaking news about buried treasure since 2018, when the FBI conducted a secretive dig in a remote area of Pennsylvania, aimed at recovering a legendary cache of stolen Civil War-era gold. The FBI has long refused to confirm it was searching for the fabled gold — while also insisting it didn’t find whatever it was hoping to dig up.Rubinkam knew the FBI needed a federal search warrant to gain access to the site, but every document in the case was sealed ... as if the case didn’t exist. With help from AP attorney Brian Barrett and a Philadelphia-based media lawyer, a judge lifted the sealing order, revealing a veritable gold mine of news and confirming Rubinkam’s previous reporting: that the feds were, indeed, looking for gold. Among the details in the FBI’s unsealed affidavit: A contractor’s sensitive instruments had detected a huge underground mass with the density of gold.What the unsealed case didn’t include was a document describing what the FBI actually found. Federal prosecutors assert no such document exists because the dig came up empty. But the treasure hunters who led the FBI to the site in the first place believe the evidence says otherwise. They are seeking FBI records of the dig.Rubinkam’s story was among the top 10 most-viewed stories on apnews.com last week. It appeared on newspapers' front pages and spurred follow-ups, including by The Washington Post.https://aplink.news/gcohttps://aplink.news/jyq

Best of the Week — First Winner

Resourceful AP team dominates all-formats coverage of Colorado inferno

When a winter grassland fire exploded along Colorado’s Front Range two days before New Year’s, destroying nearly 1,000 homes and forcing tens of thousands to flee, AP staffers in all formats rushed to document what is likely the state’s most destructive fire ever.

The coverage included first video and photos of the massive flames on Day One, giving AP a quick competitive edge from the start. AP stayed ahead in the days that followed with staffers trekking for miles into the burn area, quickly delivering text, video and photos as residents returned to the remains of their homes. The reporting also placed the blaze in the larger context of global warming in the American West.

During a busy news week, the initial fire coverage was among AP’s top stories.

For compelling all-formats content from this rare, horrific winter fire, the team of Eugene Garcia, Dave Zelio, Thomas Peipert, Colleen Slevin, Jim Anderson, Martha Bellisle, Brittany Peterson, Patty Nieberg, David Zalubowski and Jack Dempsey is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Preparation, context put AP ahead on opioids verdict against pharmacies

used planning, prep material and contextualized coverage to put AP well ahead of the competition when a federal jury in Cleveland held pharmacy chains responsible for their role in the opioids crisis. The jury found CVS, Walgreens and Walmart pharmacies recklessly distributed massive amounts of pain pills in two Ohio counties.Seewer and Mulvihill drafted prep that included not only the possible jury decisions but their potential impact on the larger landscape of opioids litigation. They also planned how to get the story out quickly, Seewer making sure AP was literally well-positioned, planting himself outside the courtroom waiting for the verdict. The result: an urgent filing by the East Desk’s Jeff McMillan that beat major competitors by at least 20 minutes, delivering remarkably strong play.Swift teamwork added reaction from both sides, as Seewer talked with lawyers at court while Mulvihill got statements from the companies and reached out to other sources. Photos prepared in advance were quickly linked, and the reporters also helped ensure AP had video of lawyers reacting to the verdict.The pair followed up the next day with even more context in a smart story that unspooled the central argument of the case — that the pharmacies creating a “public nuisance” with their dispensing — and looked ahead to how the verdict could affect other litigation and communities that want to hold pharmacies accountable.https://aplink.news/i6jhttps://aplink.news/qa9https://aplink.video/g20

Best of the Week — First Winner

Under the volcano: Stunning photos of ‘slow motion annihilation’ on the island of La Palma

The volcano on La Palma has been active for months — and so have any number of news agencies, documenting with day-to-day images, most often from a distance after authorities declared much of the Spanish island off-limits.

That was the challenge for Madrid-based chief photographer Emilio Morenatti, who wanted a fresh angle. Leaning on contacts, Morenatti gained access inside the exclusion zone. There, while providing daily images for the AP wire, he poured his creative energy into a series of still life photos that cross over into the art world, showing what he describes as “annihilation in slow motion.”

His images show neighborhoods, yards, houses and all the possessions therein buried in volcanic ash. One colleague called the work “shocking and beautiful at the same time.”

The package that was well-received by international clients and Morenatti was interviewed by Spanish television. Even competitor photographers took to social media to praise his work.

For combining determination, access, timing and talent to produce remarkable images that take viewers to the heart of an unfolding catastrophe, Morenatti is this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP first with report of abuse, cover-up by French clergy

broke news with an early scoop on the staggering scale — hundreds of thousands of victims — in a long-awaited report on sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church. That was just the start of a week of powerful and delicate AP coverage of France’s first nationwide reckoning with systemic church abuse, cover-ups and decades of trauma.On the eve of the report’s release, Paris-based senior field producer Masha Macpherson and video journalist Alex Turnbull tracked down an abuse victim who had inside information about the findings — notably, an estimated 216,000 children had been abused by clergy over the past 70 years. Their on-camera interview saw massive use.The following day, reporter Sylvie Corbet, senior producer Jeff Schaeffer, Macpherson and other Paris staffers, working closely with AP Vatican authority Nicole Winfield, produced fast-moving, comprehensive coverage on the release of the 2,500-page report. AP had live video, six video edits and two stories, including emotional reaction from victims and bishops; victims’ groups shared AP's stories online. And Schaeffer found a searing, intimate way to tell the victims’ side of the story in all formats: through the eyes of actor Laurent Martinez, who was abused by a priest and is working out the trauma onstage.https://aplink.news/30jhttps://aplink.video/tpthttps://aplink.news/sirhttps://aplink.video/v1t

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP wins exclusive access to notorious federal jail in NY

secured rare access inside the federal jail in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, reporting first-hand about the structural mess and squalid conditions. The AP pair had previously reported that the infamous Metropolitan Correctional Center, built in the 1970s, is slated for at least temporary closure. Still, they wanted more.Previous requests had been denied, but Balsamo and Sisak relied on years of deep source work and weeks of negotiations with the Justice Department and the BOP, finally winning access inside the MCC in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where a majority of the inmates will be moved.Balsamo, AP’s lead Justice Department reporter who was the first journalist to cover the resumption of federal executions, came away from MCC with details like: “One cell is off-limits because the door is now unstable — likely because of the constant pounding over the years from the prisoners inside on the cinder block walls.” New York-based law enforcement reporter Sisak also reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and judicial orders that detailed the conditions inmates had faced and researched the history of the building.The result was a vividly written and reported exclusive unmatched by any other news agency. The story was picked up by New York media and news outlets across the country. https://aplink.news/xck

Best of the Week — First Winner

Resourceful post-hurricane reporting yields exclusives on Louisiana oil spills

As Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana — launching strong AP coverage that would stretch from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast — Washington-based investigative reporter Michael Biesecker contacted federal and state officials who kept telling him they had no confirmed reports of oil or chemical spills along the coast.

But Biesecker’s inspection of aerial photos by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a different story. He found a worrying miles-long oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico off the region’s main oil and gas port, and another sheen coming from a massive oil refinery along the Mississippi River.

His persistence led to a series of exclusives on the two oil spills, including the news that divers had identified a broken undersea pipeline as the apparent source of the offshore slick.

For smart reporting that put AP ahead of the competition — and even ahead of the government and energy companies themselves — on an important environmental story in the wake of Ida, Biesecker is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

US didn't track more than $150B in pandemic school aid. AP did.

teamed up on an all-formats project documenting what happened to historic sums of pandemic aid released to the nation’s schools.Congress has sent more than $150 billion to the states to help K-12 schools since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but the federal government has no accounting of where that money went. Over a period of months, reporter Mulvihill and data journalists Fassett and Fenn did that painstaking work, going state by state to ferret out how multiple streams of congressional funding as used. The result was a massive but granular database shared with AP customers in advance of publication, showing how much federal money each school district in the country received and how it compared to other schools — public, private and charter.With reporting help from Binkley, the team also produced three distinctive news leads: Most school districts do not intend to spend the money in the transformative ways the Biden administration envisions; virtual schools that were already fully online before the pandemic received as much or more as traditional school districts; and some Republican governors used the windfall to further school choice policies that had previously been blocked by legislatures or courts. Householder delivered the video while Krupa and Osorio handled photos in Massachusetts and Detroit respectively.Drawing on AP’s national reach, the work resulted in data that customers could localize as well as two explanatory webinars and sidebars in more than a dozen states by AP statehouse reporters.https://aplink.news/jbehttps://aplink.news/usjhttps://aplink.news/thrhttps://aplink.video/b65

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP gets first look inside China’s largest detention center, breaks news on Uyghur incarceration

The sprawling Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Xinjiang, China, is the largest such facility in China (possibly the world), holding perhaps 10,000 or more and embodying the plight of the Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities. Western news organizations have only been able to report from the outside. But the Beijing-based team of enterprise journalist Dake Kang, photographer Mark Schiefelbein and news director Ken Moritsugu managed to get a tour, making the AP the first Western news organization to report inside the facility.

They delivered a vivid package on life inside the detention center, from numbered and tagged Uyghurs sitting ramrod straight to the instructions on force-feeding in the medical room. The journalists also revealed a disturbing new trend: China is moving from the temporary detention of Uyghurs to more permanent mass incarceration of people who have committed no real crime.

The story topped AP’s reader engagement for the week and drew comment from the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who called China’s repression of the Uyghurs “horrific.”

For bringing the world rare insight into the detention centers where China holds Uyghurs, the team of Kang, Schiefelbein and Moritsugu earns AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

AP reveals a water crisis at the boiling point for Native Americans, farmers in Western river basin

AP Portland, Oregon, reporter Gillian Flaccus has long followed a simmering issue in the Klamath River Basin, a swath of rural agricultural land in Northern California and southern Oregon that is ground zero for the fight over an increasingly precious resource in the American West: water. Amid extreme drought in the region, the U.S. government has stopped irrigation to hundreds of farmers for the first time in history, while Native American tribes along the 257-mile Klamath River are watching fish species hover closer to extinction. The farmers face ruin and tribes worry their culture will vanish.Flaccus has developed deep sources with area farmers as well as tribal members and recently spent nearly a week in the remote area with freelance photographer Nathan Howard documenting an issue that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Working with New York photo editor and digital storyteller Alyssa Goodman, they produced a sweeping, striking all-formats package that showed the pain on both sides as people begin to realize the water may not be coming back. The package was among AP’s most-viewed stories for Friday. For immersive journalism that explores the human consequences of drought in the U.S. West, Flaccus, Howard and Goodman receive this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Resourceful AP team leads coverage of stuck Suez ship

dominated the story of the massive cargo ship blocking in the Suez Canal. Using satellite images, tracking data and healthy skepticism, the AP team avoided the errors of their competitors to deliver accurate, timely all-formats reporting. From the first day that the Ever Given wedged itself across the canal, authorities offered incorrect information, claiming the canal remained open to traffic and that the ship had been pulled aside. While others repeated those false claims, AP relied on tracking data to report the truth — the Suez Canal was completely cut off.Cairo regional news director Hyde and her Dubai counterpart, Gambrell, worked closely together on this complex story, directing coverage while also producing video and photo content as text reporter Magdy and video journalist Hatem worked on the ground in Suez despite tight restrictions.AP’s relationship with the satellite photo provider Planet Labs gave AP an advantage of eight hours or more over major competitor agencies. Interviews recorded on Zoom and video of idle ships in the canal allowed clients to visualize the story — with one video edit being used by 118 channels. Text explainers added context that helped clients better tell the story that affected shipping and economies across the globe.https://bit.ly/3cEUE9Vhttps://bit.ly/3cGz5pw

Best of the States

Effects of California drought documented in compelling all-formats content and presentation

With California sinking deeper into drought as wildfire season approaches, AP set out to show the drought’s impact on vulnerable areas — beyond the orange glow of burning homes. Top freelance photographers Noah Berger and Josh Edelson teamed up with reporter Adam Beam, focusing on the six reservoirs with the lowest water levels. 

Both photographers are trained and equipped with drones; they delivered stunning visuals, including boat docks beached on dry land, charred hillside homes overlooking a lake reduced to puddle-like status and boat launches that don’t even reach the water’s edge. Meanwhile, Beam conducted interviews and visited the massive Lake Oroville reservoir, where the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century raged in 2018. 

The package was enhanced by digital storyteller Samantha Shotzbarger, who created a arresting presentation giving readers an immersive view of the evaporating reservoirs.   

For a revealing and forbidding look at the effects of California’s drought, the team of Berger, Edelson, Beam and Shotzbarger earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Sourcing, teamwork deliver scoop on federal charges in Floyd killing

delivered a 20-minute beat on the news that four former officers involved in the death of George Floyd were indicted on federal civil rights charges — an unusual move for the Justice Department because three of the officers haven’t faced state trial yet.Balsamo had learned that the federal charges were imminent, and Forliti worked her sources to get the full story: off-the-record details about the still-sealed indictment that allowed her to write robust, fully-formed prep. She was even tipped off that the charges would drop early Friday morning.But when that didn't happen, a source quietly tipped Forliti to phone into a federal hearing happening live. The officers were appearing in federal court, with the charges still sealed. The AP pair — possibly the only reporters listening during the hearing — put out a fast cover story that the former cops were facing federal charges. Balsamo then went to his sources, asking them to send the indictment, because, while it hadn’t been made public yet, he had heard the judge order it made public. AP soon had the indictment. He and Forliti filed alerts, writethrus loaded with context and a full story within 15 minutes. Forliti also filed a video brief on the charges. Meanwhile, no one matched their story for a full 20 minutes, and major national publications were 40 minutes or more behind the AP. Even the hometown Star Tribune used AP’s story on its website.https://bit.ly/3tJ9YYqhttps://bit.ly/3w2BvFF

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP’s ace soccer journalist scores in all formats as protest turns violent at Manchester United

Building on his recent coverage of the collapse of the Super League, AP global soccer writer Rob Harris knew he needed to attend Sunday’s match between two teams that were part of the failed breakaway league — Manchester United and Liverpool — amid rising fan anger at the clubs.

Reporters were prevented from entering the stadium hours before the scheduled kickoff, with most waiting outside the entrance to Old Trafford. But Harris looped around the opposite side of the stadium to get closer to the expected protests.

What followed was a multiformat win. As the the crowd grew unruly, eventually breaking into the stadium and onto the field, lighting flares and lobbing bottles, Harris phoned in text and uploaded video from the melee, including the start of clashes between fans and police. He and a pair of stringers supplemented with photos. On an important day for Premier League coverage, Harris’ video was featured in major networks’ coverage, and AP’s text alert on the postponement of the game beat even Britain’s top agency. 

For all-formats command of his beat under difficult circumstances, and significant wins against the competition, Harris earns AP’s Best of the Week honors.

Best of the States

A photographer’s affecting portrait of Korean American seniors, fearful amid anti-Asian violence

The Koreatown area of Los Angeles can be a challenging place to report — many residents are hesitant to speak to the press. That makes what Los Angeles-based photographer Jae Hong pulled off that much more impressive. 

Hong, a Korean American who moved to LA as a teenager, had recently spent a year on assignment in Tokyo. When he returned to the U.S., he was astonished by the increased aggression he saw toward Asian Americans, who were being blamed by some for COVID-19. 

After much outreach and many conversations with the local Korean community, he found a few families willing to let him into their lives. The end result — Hong’s somber photos and poignant text — is a compelling portrait of a community experiencing very real fear amid attacks targeting Asians. 

For timely, revealing enterprise reporting in both text and photos, Jae Hong wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP uses sourcing, deep reporting to break news of Madoff death

teamed up to break the news of the prison death of Bernie Madoff, the pair delivering a deeply reported obituary on the notorious Ponzi-schemer whose massive securities swindle wiped out people’s fortunes and ruined charities.Washington-based Justice Department reporter Balsamo called his editor Colleen Long early last Wednesday, calmly asking, “Hey, I’m driving. Can you help me with something? Bernie Madoff is dead.” Balsamo’s deep network of sources had tipped him off, and within minutes an alert moved, followed by a short story. Balsamo and New York reporter Hays worked to fill out the story, Hays layering it with details gleaned from experience covering Madoff and his trial. AP was ahead of the competition by 25 minutes to an hour, and many major outlets — including ABC, CBS and Fox — relied on the AP pair’s quick, exclusive reporting.https://bit.ly/3sGlP9mhttps://apnews.com/hub/bernard-madoff

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP documents evidence of Tigray ethnic cleansing by Ethiopia

teamed up to present the strongest case yet that Ethiopia has conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against its Tigray minority, who have claimed for months that thousands are being killed, raped and starved by the Ethiopian government and its allies.East Africa correspondent Anna and Cairo-based photographer El-Mofty conducted meticulous interviews with 30 refugees in Sudan who had fled their homeland, as well as aid workers and officials. Person after person described multiple killings, and several women and medical workers described mass rapes. Many warned that deliberate starvation had already started. The journalists also documented hard evidence of the ethnic cleansing, in the form of an identity card that completely removed all references to the Tigray minority. “I kept it to show the world,” one refugee said.El-Mofty’s photos were stunning, and a freelancer joined the team to take video footage. The package included an animated graphic of the identity cards by Peter Hamlin, and presentation by Natalie Castañeda.The deeply reported story sparked immediate reaction, and the Ethiopian government was provoked to reply, criticizing “the rush to accuse the government” and calling Tigray forces “a criminal enterprise.” But one researcher told Anna, “You just wrote the most harrowing report about Tigray to date.” Even the bureau chief of a major competitor called the story “beautifully written,” saying he was “super jealous.”https://bit.ly/3aaiLLVhttps://bit.ly/2ORR2ILhttps://bit.ly/3dk9Idu

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP examines vaccine inequity for already marginalized workers

teamed up with international colleagues for a compelling account of vaccine inequity in India, Africa and Latin America, exposing the plight of an estimated 20 million informal waste workers who keep cities clean and divert waste away from landfills but are not yet eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine.Health and science reporter Ghosal was exploring vaccine policy in India when he was stuck by the sheer invisibility of the scavengers who live on the fringes, far from the public discourse around who should be prioritized for vaccination. Ghosal worked with photographer Qadri and video journalist Ganguly for on-the-ground reporting at the massive garbage mountain on the outskirts of New Delhi. They came back with moving personal stories that added depth to the narrative, with powerful visuals laying bare the workers’ experience amid grinding poverty.To amplify the work, Ghosal reached out to colleagues across Africa and in Latin America, who shared similar accounts of exclusion and deep-rooted inequalities in access to health care. They delivered, adding to a story that included contributions by Brian Inganga and Tom Odula in Nairobi, Farai Mutsaka in Zimbabwe, Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg, Marco Ugarte in Mexico City, Ariana Cubillos in Venezuela and Manish Swarup in New Delhi.The arresting all-formats package highlighted how the pandemic has exacerbated existing income inequalities. The words and images of trash pickers wearing discarded protective suits in Nairobi, and scavengers plunging their bare hands into thousands of tons of garbage in New Delhi, reveal a community of marginalized workers who struggle to get vaccinated despite providing a service many consider essential.https://bit.ly/3utbKO7https://bit.ly/3fNIDAZhttps://bit.ly/2R8XA6l

Best of the Week — First Winner

Sourcing, teamwork deliver major AP scoop on WHO-China report of virus origins

AP scooped the rest of the world with the contents of the highly anticipated report by Chinese and World Health Organization experts on the origins of the COVID-19 virus. The scoop was so significant that it forced our direct competitors to quote AP in their headlines and stories for hours, as they and others scrambled to match it. 

How did AP do it?

Tipped that the report was imminent, Geneva chief correspondent Jamey Keaten cast a wide net among trusted sources, seeking a copy whenever it became available — and AP’s repeated scoops on WHO have made it the go-to news organization for reliable reporting on the U.N. agency. That paid off: A source Keaten had cultivated for years sent the report to him electronically early Monday morning. He quickly relayed the file to Greater China news director Ken Moritsugu, launching an urgent multiformat effort. Working with colleagues in Asia, Moritsugu had a carefully worded alert and story on the wire as day dawned in Europe. AP video colleagues followed with a six-minute archive package, footage of the report itself and official on-camera reaction.

For giving the AP a massive lead on the day’s biggest story, and harnessing AP’s global presence to produce news with speed and accuracy, Keaten and Moritsugu earn AP’s Best of the Week honors.

Best of the Week — First Winner

A master class: AP teams deliver sweeping coverage of the migrant surge at the US-Mexico border

When the U.S.-Mexico border became a major front-page story again in recent weeks, the AP set out to tell the story of newly arriving Central American children and families in trademark AP fashion: with compelling all-formats journalism and richly reported viewpoints from migrants to bring perspective to readers on the topic of immigration.

Photographers Julio Cortez and Dario Lopez-Mills, reporters Adriana Gómez Licón and Elliot Spagat, and video journalists Eugene Garcia and John Mone answered the call and more, delivering a string of stories last week that amounted to a master class in how to cover the border.

Among the highlights were the story of a 7-year-old girl crossing the border without her parents in the middle of the night, the story of migrant families dumped by the Biden administration in a dangerous Mexican border town while other families in the same circumstance gained entry into the U.S., and in-flight coverage of a 5-year-old Honduran immigrant en route to Baltimore. The immersive multiformat work received tremendous play. 

For bringing to life the human stories of those seeking entry to the United States, especially the sharp increase in the number of families and children in recent weeks and the struggles of border officials to cope, Gómez Licón, Cortez, Mone, Spagat, Lopez and Garcia share AP’s Best of the Week honors.