Best of the States

‘Sundays After’: Portraits of resilience in the wake of clergy abuse

Photographer Maye-E Wong wanted to find a new way to tell the stories of those who suffered from clergy abuse, emphasizing that they were survivors, not victims. 

Her plan: She would photograph them with a Polaroid camera, then soak the prints and release the thin fragile membranes that held the images. The images were imperfect – wrinkled and distressed – but they endure, a metaphor for the survivors they portrayed.

Wong and reporter Juliet Linderman traveled the country to interview and photograph survivors, spending days with them and listening to their stories. The result was a stunning presentation that set AP viewership records and earned praise from both the subjects and the public.

For an arresting package of inspired photography and sensitive, insightful reporting, Wong and Linderman receive this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP gets ‘blockbuster’ scoop on China’s delay in warning of the coronavirus

What and when did authorities in China know about the coronavirus’ initial spread and did they react fast enough? Those have become burning questions as COVID-19 tears a deadly and destructive path across the globe.

Among the toughest to answer, too. 

The Associated Press cracked open China’s lockdown on information with an exclusive story – based on internal documents and expert testimony – revealing that top officials in Beijing knew about a likely pandemic, but held off on warning the public for at least six days – while tens of thousands attended a banquet in Wuhan and millions more travelled for Lunar New Year festivities.

The story’s byline – “By The Associated Press” – testified to the risks run by the reporter who secured and developed the major scoop.

For breaking through China’s tightly policed walls of information control about the critical first days of the pandemic, with a scoop secured in one of the world’s toughest media environments, the unnamed but not unsung AP reporter is this week’s Best of the Week laureate.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Some national parks insist on staying open

were out front with widespread coverage as many national parks insisted on remaining open during the COVID-19 pandemic, triggering health concerns in neighboring towns. Seattle photographer Ted Warren showed visitors enjoying Mount Rainier National Park, and while some parks closed, others remained open with entrance fees waived by the Trump administration and promised federal guidelines still in limbo.https://bit.ly/2UCB1Xbhttps://bit.ly/2xFR3qa

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

DC reporters pull off scoop on new travel restrictions

scrambled to confirm a source’s weekend tip that President Donald Trump was extending stringent European travel restrictions to the U.K. and Ireland amid the coronavirus crisis. They had the alert and story out a full hour ahead of the president’s news conference, leaving other news organizations to widely credit AP. https://bit.ly/2xptEt4https://bit.ly/2xsbVk

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: How Bloomberg’s largesse built his campaign

revealed how Michael Bloomberg built a foundation of political goodwill across the U.S. for his 2020 campaign with years of political and charitable giving. The AP team compiled data on Bloomberg’s contributions over the last six years, then cross-referenced that with the names of politicians and activists who had endorsed him to create a comprehensive look, including a localizable data distribution and graphic elements. https://bit.ly/2PR1ZHF

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Documents reveal underuse of holding cells for asylum seekers

for first reporting unsealed documents that raised questions about the Trump administration’s reasoning for forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico. Spagat closely watched the court file and prodded an official once a deadline had passed, breaking the news that holding cells at most U.S. facilities were no more than half full – and some were completely empty – during an unprecedented surge of asylum-seeking families from Central America. The Trump administration claimed that people had to wait in Mexico because it didn’t have the means to accommodate them. https://bit.ly/39PkhAM

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: NFL’s Saints allegedly do damage control for Catholic Church on abuse crisis

New York-based federal law enforcement reporter Jim Mustian never gives up on a story.

Sticking with a case he began covering at another news organization in another state more than two years ago, Mustian landed a jaw-dropping exclusive for the AP: That a trove of hundreds of confidential emails has surfaced allegedly showing executives of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese amid its clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The story had an immediate, visceral impact with readers and earned praise from fellow journalists.

Mustian will continue to chip away at this story and, hopefully, reveal more about the Saints and their involvement with the church. But for now, Mustian’s sticktoitiveness and tough accountability reporting earns him this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP reporting reveals nonstop chaos in overburdened immigration courtrooms

Led by reporters Amy Taxin and Deepti Hajela, the AP harnessed its vast geographic reach and expertise on the topic of immigration to deliver a striking, all-formats examination of the nation’s beleaguered immigration court system. 

AP journalists fanned out to courtrooms across the U.S. to vividly illustrate chaos in the nation’s immigration courts, plagued by a 1 million case backlog. 

The reporting uncovered personal stories of immigrants entangled in the system, including an in-depth package from rural Georgia by reporter Kate Brumback and photographer David Goldman, and video by producer Noreen Nasir.

For a revealing look at a legal system struggling to cope with the influx of immigrants, and families caught up in the grinding legal process, Taxin, Hajela, Brumback, Goldman and Nasir share AP’s Best of the Week honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Denied asylum, migrants return to place they fear: Home

for telling the stories of perils faced by migrants – including the death of a spouse – as they return to dangerous home towns after being denied asylum by the restrictive policies of the Trump administration. https://bit.ly/2s7MG4H

Best of the Week — First Winner

Comprehensive impeachment coverage showcases AP’s speed, depth and reach

The world depends on The Associated Press during historic moments, and the impeachment of President Donald Trump was no exception. 

Journalists in Washington and beyond demonstrated the AP’s extraordinary power and depth to cover all angles of the story, including the monthslong footrace to tally votes ahead of proceedings, videos filed quickly of both the hearings and of Trump’s reaction, and the ground-level view of impeachment in six election battleground states.

Stellar post-vote stories included an analysis of how impeachment would affect Trump’s legacy and the 2020 campaign, as well as an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

For impeachment coverage that consistently broke news, gave crucial context and provided customers with materials they could localize and promote, the Washington bureau and the team of journalists behind the vote tracking effort win AP’s Best of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Coming soon to natural park trails: motorized bicycles

For source reporting and collaboration that enabled AP to break the story about the Trump administration's plan to open national park trails to motorized bikes. Sharp got a tip that the Interior Department was expected to lift a decades-long ban on any vehicles with motors on National Park hiking and biking trails. He began reporting to get reaction even before the rule change was announced. Meanwhile, Knickmeyer got a tip that evening from a non-profit foundation that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had without any public notice signed an order lifting the ban immediately and classifying e-bikes as non-motor vehicles.

https://apnews.com/d22c8bb8a83c48c0b421dc0da81efd0b

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

North Dakota county could be first to vote against refugees

for reporting on a North Dakota county that appeared set to become the first in the U.S. to vote against taking any new refugees after President Donald Trump issued an executive order giving them the power to do so. https://bit.ly/2ExyG6Z

Best of the States

Dual labors of love: Documenting a Chicago neighborhood that would not die

Chicago-based national writer Martha Irvine has always been interested in stories about the city’s neighborhoods that buck stereotypes. So when she learned of a grassroots project to “reclaim” abandoned housing on the city’s South Side, Irvine began what she calls “a labor of love.” 

She spent months getting to know the people of the Chicago Lawn neighborhood and their stories. Residents – ex-cons, immigrants, members of the urban working class – were not prepared to let their neighborhood succumb to the malaise that had engulfed other areas of the city, so they came together to make Chicago Lawn a desirable place to live. 

Irvine did it all – not just writing this remarkable story, but shooting the photos and video. The package received heavy play and elicited rewarding feedback. One woman called the work “incredibly uplifting,” adding, “Loved the video, too. Inspiration station.”

For a compelling all-formats package that shed light on a Chicago neighborhood’s success story and resonated with readers, Martha Irvine earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Migrants face bleak situation in camps south of the border

for bringing new attention to a growing humanitarian crisis with a pair of powerful, complementary stories on the bleak conditions facing migrants forced to wait at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump administration policies. Verza reported that drug cartels and gangs are profiting from the policy by robbing and extorting the migrants, while Merchant revealed the dire medical conditions at a migrant camp just feet from U.S. soil.https://bit.ly/2s0z5M8https://bit.ly/2XFDxvB

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Billionaire governor’s farm received federal subsidy

for revisiting records compiled by the AP Data Team months earlier to reveal that the family farm of Jim Justice, the state’s billionaire governor, had been West Virginia’s largest single beneficiary of soybean subsidies under the program created by the Trump administration to help farmers hurt by the trade war with China. https://bit.ly/3639npM

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: U.S. Census Bureau asks states for citizenship information

for following up after President Donald Trump’s executive order asking federal agencies to seek citizenship information when the U.S. Supreme Court said the question couldn't be included in the 2020 Census. Schneider learned something the Census Bureau wasn’t eager to reveal – that they were in the process of asking motor vehicle divisions in all 50 states to provide information from driver’s license data, including citizenship status. https://bit.ly/32KWOO3

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Putting a human face on US border ‘bait and switch’

for telling the story of migrants who obeyed U.S. instructions and have been waiting in Mexico to apply for asylum. A new lawsuit alleges the Trump administration is carrying out a ‘bait and switch’ by now banning asylum for many of those immigrants who passed through another country on their way to the U.S. border. https://bit.ly/2MdUBDy

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team documents migrants’ life in limbo at the border

for elegant for elegant photos, reporting and writing to tell the story of what life is like for the thousands of migrants stranded for months on end at the Mexican border under Trump immigration crackdowns.https://bit.ly/2n8WrN8https://bit.ly/2nhDXdB

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

APNewsBreak: US plan to send asylum seekers to El Salvador

for breaking the astonishing news that the U.S. was signing an agreement that would send would-be asylum-seekers to one of the world's most violent countries, El Salvador. Long was was hours ahead of the official announcement and the first to get a copy of the agreement.https://bit.ly/2mt3oZh

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exclusive, elusive look at first lady’s White House renovations

for persistence that yielded a deeply reported story on Melania Trump’s White House renovations, including exclusive access for photos and video.https://bit.ly/2mCQAPYhttps://bit.ly/2n71AFuhttps://bit.ly/2l66Ngj