Feb. 02, 2024
Beat of the Week
(Honorable Mention)
AP first to declare Trump winner in New Hampshire thanks to lightning-fast vote count
Because it’s the first presidential primary on the calendar, there’s no margin for error.Read more
Because it’s the first presidential primary on the calendar, there’s no margin for error.Read more
AP’s team in India provided visually compelling, richly reported, all-format coverage of one of the country’s most defining and contentious events, the opening of a controversial Hindu temple built on a razed mosque.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a controversial Hindu temple, it marked a political triumph for the populist leader under whose watch the line between religion and state has largely eroded in the constitutionally secular country. The temple sits on a site where Hindu mobs tore down a mosque three decades ago, its fraught history still an open wound for many Muslims.
AP’s cross-format team in Delhi and on ground in Ayodhya provided visually rich and nuanced coverage that was both thoughtful and insightful. Photographer Rajesh Kumar Singh was the only international photographer who managed to secure access to the high-security temple complex to exclusively cover the select gathering of invitees and arrival of Modi. AP was first among the global agencies to file self-shot images of the event while other agencies had to rely on handout images.
Singh, senior video journalist Rishi Lekhi, and stringer Biswajeet Banerjee kept the inputs steadily flowing in from Ayodhya, including live coverage from outside the venue, while Shonal Ganguly, Saaliq Sheikh and Krutika Pathi in Delhi helped with a quick turnaround of both text and video edits, enriching them with useful background and voices of ordinary Indians.
For playing a key role in bringing images of this momentous event to global audiences — and putting it in context — Rajesh Kumar Singh, Rishi Lekhi, Biswajeet Banerjee, Sheikh Saaliq, Shonal Ganguly and Krutika Pathi are Best of the Week — First Winner.
After hearing special prosecutors say they’d seek to bring a case against Alec Baldwin before a grand jury around mid-November 2023, AP dived into understanding the process to position itself to break the news.Read more
The AP Bangkok bureau speedily responded to reports online about a firework explosion in central Thailand that killed 23 by initially utilizing social media to source and verify information for all formats and to beat competitors in reporting the first accident of its kind in the country this year.Read more
When North Korea declared a major policy change in how it will treat South Korea, AP’s Seoul bureau beat the competition from start to finish, with both urgent spot coverage of the crucial story and with unrivaled analysis that highlighted the difference of this development from the steady drumbeat of other North Korean provocations. Read more
AP covered a highly anticipated Justice Department report into the Robb Elementary School shooting that promised to address a question that continues to stoke outrage nearly two years later: Why did Texas police wait more than an hour to confront the gunman inside a fourth-grade classroom?Read more
AP’s team in The Hague dominated coverage of the International Court of Justice hearings into South Africa’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, thanks to expertise in international law and solid planning across continents.
Across two intense days and under close global scrutiny, AP’s team explored and explained the hearings into accusations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Expertise in international law, knowledge of sensitive geopolitics and solid planning and coordination across continents contributed to AP’s showing.
AP’s coverage was front and center on customer websites and broadcasts around the world for two days straight. AP ran more than a dozen videos of the hearings and protests and reactions around the world. Video edits from The Hague alone scored more than 5,000 hits, and the live coverage over two days earned a staggering 3,300 hits. The top five videos on APNews on Jan. 11 were all from The Hague. The text stories with photos were among the top stories viewed both by customers and online. The New York Times was among customers featuring all formats of AP coverage on its website as the hearings unfolded.
For teaming up to tell the story of a case at The Hague that struck at the heart of Israel’s national identity, Corder, Furtula, Carlson and Casert share Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP pitched an ambitious idea: With the 75th anniversary of The Associated Press Top 25 men’s basketball poll coming up this season, could the AP find a way to sift the data — 75 years of weekly polls — to come up with a rundown of the greatest teams of all time?Read more
Late last Monday evening, videos began circulating online of young Hasidic men emerging from a tunnel inside a historic Brooklyn synagogue and brawling with police. AP quickly pulled together a story on what little police and the synagogue’s leaders would say, but big questions still remained.Read more
A dash between two of Texas’ biggest cities quickly put AP at the scene of a downtown blast in all formats, coming away with widely used visuals and strong reporting.Read more
In a deeply reported story with historical scope, AP traced the changing flavor of free speech on the American college campus as higher education reeled from the ousters of two Ivy League university presidents over free-speech issues.Read more
In back-to-back days over the New Year’s holiday, it seemed that the eyes of the world were on Tokyo, as the AP bureau deftly handled a massive earthquake and a fiery plane disaster that rocked the country — two of the biggest stories from Japan in years — and beat the competition in all formats while doing so. Their coverage included exclusive video, print and photos that far surpassed the offerings from our competitors.
The bureau activated immediately once a 7.6-magnitude quake hit western Japan on New Year’s Day, which was followed by more than 100 aftershocks. Business Writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo filed alerts and for days wrote stories that explained one of the most quake-prone places on earth. Photographer Hiro Komae and freelance videographer Richard Colombo rushed to the scene, followed by video journalist Ayaka McGill. They braved brutal working conditions — sleeping in their car and navigating wrecked roads, often driving more than 12 hours to reach destinations.
Then, on Jan. 2, another massive story: A Japan Airlines passenger jet struck a coast guard plane on a Tokyo runway. Dramatic video, which AP had faster than competitors, showed the JAL plane bursting into flames as it streaked away from the fireball that engulfed the other plane, where five died. Miraculously, all the JAL passengers evacuated safely. Working off TV coverage, News Director Foster Klug had the first urgents out ahead of competitors, with correspondent Mari Yamaguchi interrupting her holiday to write stories that investigated what went wrong and showed what it was like inside the plane. Business colleagues added invaluable context about the planes.
For dominating the competition on consecutive days in trying conditions on two massive breaking stories, we award the Tokyo bureau Best of the Week — First Winner.
Thanks to teamwork across multiple departments and formats, AP dominated coverage of a tragic school shooting in Perry, Iowa, by being the first with photos from the scene, the first to have interviews with students, and the only media outlet to secure an interview with the mother of the 11-year-old victim, as well as exclusive photos of him.Read more
Quick action by AP confirmed information, provided context and obtained clearance for a courthouse video circulating on a local courts blog in which a defendant leaped over a table and the judge’s bench and attacked her.Read more
More than six months after the explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine’s Kherson region, an AP investigation by Samya Kullab and Ilia Novikov found that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead. The AP inquiry came the closest yet to revealing the real number of deaths Russia tried to hide from the dam’s destruction, which Ukrainians believe was carried out to hamper the Ukrainian counteroffensive across the Dnipro River. Russia has denied it was responsible.
AP Kyiv correspondent Kullab and news assistant Novikov were working on a different story about how residents of the affected town of Oleshky were returning slowly to Ukraine. During their reporting, a source told them of a mass grave. That sent Kullab and Novikov in a fresh direction, and the story of the hidden deaths developed from there. Eventually, the AP spoke to health workers, volunteers, residents and recent escapees who provided invaluable details. Instead of the 59 people Russian authorities said drowned in the territory they control, AP found the real number is at least in the hundreds in just one town.
For dogged pursuit of the facts and allowing victims and their survivors to be heard, Kullab and Novikov earn Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP revealed how some Air Force nuclear missile officers were exposed to toxic risks that have likely been a factor in scores of cancers, despite the military saying for years that its nuclear missile capsules were safe.Read more
A series of capstone Maui wildfire stories that ran in the final week of 2023 — one focused on Lahaina’s losses and another on its uncertain future — showcase fruits of the extraordinary effort, commitment and selfless teamwork exhibited by AP’s Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Hawaii reporting team over months amid endless challenges to share Lahaina’s plight with the world.Read more
To tell the story of one man’s vision for South Carolina's first civil rights museum, AP wove together text, photos and video to tell the story of efforts to move South Carolina’s first civil rights museum from a photographer’s home into a larger space.Read more
Through character sketches of some of its earliest advocates, AP explored the Endangered Species Act as it turned 50 in a world changed by its presence.Read more
Using data analysis, records research and extensive interviews, an Associated Press team found dramatic disparities in U.S. government spending for various types of imperiled species 50 years after passage of the Endangered Species Act.Read more