Nov. 24, 2023
Beat of the Week
(Honorable Mention)
AP photo-led project gives glimpse of oasis for the world’s corals
AP collaborated on a rare hopeful story about the world’s corals in the age of global warming.Read more
AP collaborated on a rare hopeful story about the world’s corals in the age of global warming.Read more
An all-format AP crew stayed in Elmore, Vermont — population 800 — for five days to paint a portrait of small-town democracy in its purest form, following residents with different political views as they came together with civility to debate and vote on issues important to the community in their annual Town Meeting.Read more
An all-formats approach to a story about a rescued baby fox put the AP ahead and led to a talker win, with notable usage by customers around the world.Read more
AP presented a unique spin on daylight saving time by exploring a corner of Arizona where one Native American tribe changes clocks but a neighboring one doesn’t.Read more
AP Sports writer Bernie Wilson leveraged his 33 years of sailing coverage to break the news that two-time Olympic medalist JJ Fetter wrote a letter calling for the resignations of U.S. Sailing’s CEO, president and any other board member who supports a federal lawsuit against a sailing foundation.Read more
AP turned what would’ve been a mundane story into a riveting tale of a family’s longing to have something — anything — to bury of their deceased loved one.Read more
AP tapped into its network of sources in the French soccer world to confirm speculation that Marseille was firing its Italian coach Gennaro Gattuso, a scoop that got picked up by AP clients in both Europe and the U.S.Read more
With lawmakers in state after state invoking the best interests of children in pushing for bans or severe limits on health care for transgender children, The AP’s all-formats deep dive explored the other side of that coin, the impact of the lack of standards of care and treatment for transgender teens in crisis.Read more
Relying on relentless source work and their joint years of experience, Joshua Goodman and Eric Tucker landed twin scoops on the arrest and indictment of a former career American diplomat charged with being a secret agent for communist Cuba for decades.
Manuel Rocha, who was formerly ambassador to Bolivia, was accused of engaging in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at least 1981, the year he joined the U.S. foreign service. While the case was short on specifics of how Rocha may have assisted the island nation, it provided a vivid case study of how Cuba and its sophisticated intelligence services seek to target, and flip, U.S. officials.
First word came to Latin America correspondent Goodman from a trusted source who called on a Friday evening to say the FBI had arrested Rocha earlier that day at his home in Miami but details were under seal. He enlisted Washington-based Tucker to see if his national security sources could help shake anything loose about the case.
Their break came Sunday — with the case still sealed — when sources gave them enough information to report that Rocha was arrested on federal charges of being an agent of the Cuban government. Their urgent story, which included extensive background on Rocha’s diplomatic stops in Bolivia, Argentina, Havana and elsewhere, staked out AP’s ownership of the case.
More details followed the next morning with another AP break, when Goodman and Tucker obtained the sealed case affidavit from highly placed sources nearly an hour before it was filed, allowing them to trounce the competition with a fast news alert and urgent series.
For putting AP far ahead in revealing what the Justice Department called one of the highest-reaching infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent, Goodman and Tucker are Best of the Week — First Winner.
With an all-formats interview with a survivor, AP told a broader story about the unique difficulties stemming from sexual abuse in gay communities.Read more
A cross-format team followed officials deep into the forests of northern Uganda to capture tensions between charcoal makers and authorities after a recent ban on its production to protect the climate and local environment.Read more
Race and Ethnicity team contributors pitched a story about what union membership has meant to generations of Black families within days of United Auto Workers’ announcement that members would walk off the job at a Ford plant in Michigan.Read more
After authorities discovered more than 100 decaying bodies at a Colorado funeral home in early October, speculation spread that families may have received fake ashes. Thanks to dogged reporting, the AP broke the news that confirmed the rumors with an all-formats story.Read more
When an American researcher fell ill as he was leading an expedition into the depths of one of Turkey's longest caves, AP was first to secure video and photos.Read more
AP showed how and why a major influx of Mauritanians is arriving in the United States.Read more
AP broke the story of how the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s second-in-command quietly stepped down after they had reported that he had previously done extensive consulting work for pharmaceutical companies, including the drug maker that became the face of the opioid crisis, Purdue Pharma.Read more
AP took advantage of deep-source work to help score a scoop on an interpretation of a state supreme court decision that made it more difficult for convicted felons to restore their voting rights.Read more
help show that this is more than just entertaining, but a way of life.Read more.
were dispatched to the rural Maine town to cover conflict over a plan to build a flagpole taller than the Empire State Building.Read more.
AP explored the effect of new guidelines for treatment of kids with severe obesity that came out in January. Read more