for revealing that whistleblowers were punished at Washington's largest psychiatric hospital, which just lost federal funding because of repeated staff shortages and problems. https://bit.ly/2LgadVt
for finding a vantage point that gave them a clear view of the damaged side of the destroyer USS Fitzgerald as it was being pulled into port after colliding with a freighter. http://apne.ws/2sHA3cE
for being first to report the death of legendary comic actor Gene Wilder. http://bit.ly/2c1KqUB
for their all-formats coverage of a grenade attack aimed at Ethiopia’s new prime minister during a massive rally. https://bit.ly/2lIhXVd
for disclosing that the world governing body for track and field was weighing whether to tighten the rules that allow athletes to switch the country they represent. http://bit.ly/2bGeItU
delivered competitive all-formats coverage of Russian attacks on at least 10 Ukrainian cities, two days after an explosion on the Kerch Bridge between Crimea and Russia disrupted an important Russian supply line.From Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro, AP responded with strong reporting and striking visuals supplemented by user-generated content. AP‘s photos and videos led major news websites.Read more
for foresight in spending two years photographing the construction of the Mercedes-Benz stadium, leading to an extraordinary time-lapse video.http://bit.ly/2jPVhEMhttp://bit.ly/2mTZ596
In a world focused on life and survival, death is often unseen, endured in private and acknowledged in glowing obituaries or tragic news stories. It’s also mostly out of the control of the person who is dying.
Now, with nine U.S. states allowing terminally ill people to end their lives with fatal drugs, thousands of people have legally chosen how and when to end their lives.
Seattle Photographer Elaine Thompson has long wanted to show the real, personal side of what often comes across as an impersonal process. She spent months looking for the right subject, getting tantalizingly close to success before plans fell through. She stuck with it, and when she found Bob Fuller, she enlisted reporter Gene Johnson to tell his story.
This week’s Best of the Week goes to the team of Elaine Thompson and Gene Johnson who chronicled how one man, in the face of death, created the party of a lifetime.
Sometimes accountability stories are hiding in plain sight, but getting to them requires first recognizing the potential and then doing a whole lot of digging. Virginia reporter Sarah Rankin did both of those things.
After seeing a one-sentence mention in a legal trade publication, Rankin began the hunt for a deeper story about a continuance privilege granted to lawyer-legislators, and how one Virginia lawmaker used the privilege to consistently delay court hearings.
Rankin plowed through records of cases that involved Virginia lawmaker Jeff Campbell, the defense attorney for a one-time NASCAR race driver accused of domestic violence. She found that Campbell had employed the continuance privilege at least 30 times over three years, more than double any other lawyer-legislator.
For seizing on the brief mention, then following up with determined reporting that revealed a potential for abuse by lawyer-lawmakers in Virginia and elsewhere, Rankin wins the week’s Best of the States award.
Ezra Kaplan, legislative relief reporter, Atlanta, for his exclusive look into how one state lawmaker is running and funding an underground cannabis distribution network in Georgia. http://apne.ws/2oOZ07h
was far ahead of even local media in reporting the indictment of the man accused of killing eight people at Atlanta-area massage businesses, answering a key question in the case: whether the district attorneys in two counties where the shootings occurred would seek the death penalty and/or enhanced penalties under Georgia’s hate crimes law. Atlanta reporter Brumback had learned from sources that both counties would likely present their cases to grand juries the same day; she worked up prep for no fewer than eight different scenarios, then began checking Fulton County’s court website. The indictment showed up — with notice of intent to indeed seek hate crime charges and the death penalty. Brumback quickly obtained the document from court clerk sources, then turned to her prep reporting for the story.Meanwhile, she had asked South Desk editor R.J. Rico to keep checking Cherokee County’s court website. When the Cherokee County indictment did turn up, the pair worked together to expedite that news. As other reporters asked questions regarding Cherokee County’s indictment at the news conference, AP’s update was on the wire.AP’s reporting was more than half an hour ahead of local media, and national outlets were even further behind. The story led AP customer use for the day, picked up by some 650 news outlets. https://aplink.news/x05
relied on strong document work and deep sourcing to report exclusively on the reason a Navy SEAL unit sent to fight ISIS was abruptly pulled out of Iraq last year without explanation. The Navy gave few details, but the monthslong investigation by LaPorta and Watson revealed that female intelligence staffers deployed with a platoon of SEAL Team 7 said they were constantly ogled and sexually harassed during their time in the country. The pair tracked down a female sailor who was deployed with the SEALs who had reported the allegations and who agreed to be quoted on the record in an exclusive interview. The reporting, which began with a Freedom of Information Act request, also uncovered a previously unknown allegation of sexual misconduct against the SEAL platoon chief. https://bit.ly/3gHgpod
When the World Conservation Congress came to Honolulu, Correspondent Caleb Jones did what any good AP reporter would. He sized up potential news and obtained releases early, including ones about the Great Elephant Census in Africa and a gorilla subspecies being classified as critically endangered.
But, while planning for an interview with Conservation International CEO Peter Seligman, Jones learned something that would take AP’s coverage to another level – and take him to the bottom of the sea – while other reporters sat through speeches and presentations. Scientists with the conservation group and the University of Hawaii were about to embark on the first-ever submarine exploration of two ancient undersea volcanoes 3,000 feet beneath the Pacific and 100 miles off the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island.
for reporting that Greyhound will stop allowing Border Patrol agents without a warrant to board its buses for routine immigration checks. The announcement by the nations’s largest bus company came a week after the Johnson reported on a leaked Border Patrol memo confirming that agents can’t board private buses without the consent of the bus company. Greyhound had previously insisted that even though it didn’t like the immigration checks, it had no choice under federal law but to allow them. https://bit.ly/2VDpTKH
for their exclusive story that published the audio of the disturbing sound heard by American victims of the mysterious attacks in Havana. http://bit.ly/2wRAq5w
for gaining unprecedented access to a meeting at Washington state’s troubled Western State Hospital where staff expressed safety concerns as nurses and others are assaulted by patients and inmates with severe mental issues. https://bit.ly/2CqIOjE
documented migrant activity that peaked during the late summer months as many set off from Libya’s shores on dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea.Cairo-based reporter Magdy and video journalist Hatem spent several weeks aboard a search-and-rescue ship that patrols the central Mediterranean. They witnessed the rescues of more than 60 migrants who were at risk of drowning; several of the migrants told harrowing stories of torture and abuse in migrant detention centers in Libya. The pair’s reporting was among the most in-depth coverage since the pandemic of the atrocities migrants face on the journey toward Europe.Meanwhile, after months of trying, Barcelona-based Brito got a seat aboard a small aircraft that non-governmental rescue groups use to monitor the migrants at sea. Working all formats, Brito showed over the course of multiple flights how the crew searched for boats in distress and prodded ships in the area to take part in rescues.The coverage coincided with the largest crackdown on migrants inside Libya in recent years, during which some 5,000 were detained by Libyan forces, reported by Magdy from the ship operated by Doctors Without Borders. AP’s multiformat work at sea and from the air saw widespread use in Europe, the Middle East and beyond. https://aplink.news/yz1https://aplink.video/3xohttps://aplink.news/sfrhttps://aplink.video/w4q
for making AP the first international outlet with images of the aftermath of a devastating suicide bombing that killed 80 people at a crowded wedding party in the Afghan capital. The New York Times was among those using the work. https://bit.ly/2MwahVd
for finding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency auctioned off disaster-response trailers at fire-sale prices, and then scrambled to find housing for Hurricane Harvey victims. http://bit.ly/2hfpNqo
for revealing inconsistencies and falsehoods in the story told by two women who said they had spent months at sea after their sailboat was damaged by a ferocious storm in the Pacific Ocean. https://yhoo.it/2ztUwXI