for using records requests and documentation to exclusively report that Virginia spent $100 million over 10 years on economic development of rural sites to draw advanced manufacturing – but those sites still sit empty and the state lacks any meaningful data about what it actually has to offer companies. https://bit.ly/2GdfIVj
looked beyond the COVID-19 data to deliver a heartbreaking, intimate portrait of Detroit, one of the cities hardest hit by the pandemic. Stafford tapped into her deep knowledge of her hometown while also fulfilling AP’s mission to document inequality, showing that the grief is just part of what Detroit is facing – it is also dealing with economic uncertainty. https://bit.ly/3b6z9uR
for breaking the news that the U.S., for the first time, would abstain from an annual vote on a UN resolution that condemns America's economic embargo on Cuba, a measure it had always vehemently opposed. http://bit.ly/2flp3cQ
for securing exclusive, all-format access to the under-construction Trump golf course in Dubai, and reporting the political, economic and security implications of the club opening just weeks after the U.S. inauguration: https://apnews.com/da3e4d047aaa44e8b1b40…
Last November, more than 200 counties across America, scores of them in the upper Midwest, turned from blue to red on the electoral map. Why did voters in once-Democratic strongholds support Donald Trump?
An all-formats AP team of Claire Galofaro, Martha Irvine, David Goldman and Angeliki Kastanis set out to find the answer by focusing on one rural Wisconsin county and getting into the lives and mindset of its people. The result was a revealing package that earns the Beat of the Week.
It began as an anniversary story, but one that would break news. With North Carolina’s hotly-contested “bathroom bill,” HB2, in place for nearly a year, AP’s Raleigh bureau was asked by the South Desk to assess the economic impact of the law limiting protections for the LGBT community.
Reporters Jonathan Drew and Emery Dalesio created a spreadsheet tallying the results of their digging, including searches of public records, among them previously unseen state calculations of lost business; they interviewed corporate leaders and state and local officials. And they were able to put a hard minimum figure on huge losses to the state economy even as legislators were negotiating a revision of HB2. “The deal was struck,” The New York Times noted, “days after The Associated Press reported that the backlash against the law would cost North Carolina at least $3.7 billion in business over 12 years.”
The timely exclusive by Drew and Dalesio is the Beat of the Week.
They’re called “golden visas” – legal permission for non-citizens to reside in the U.S. or other countries in exchange for investment. But how much are such investments worth, and who is making them?
These were questions that AP’s Nomaan Merchant set out to answer, encouraged by Greater China news director Gillian Wong.
After months of searching out data from 20-plus countries, analyzing it and interviewing investors, Merchant could report that more than 100,000 Chinese have poured $24 billion in the last decade into "golden visa" programs across the world, and notably in the U.S. – an exclusive AP analysis that earns the Beat of the Week.
It’s well-known that many U.S. factory jobs have been shipped overseas or automated out of existence. What’s not so well-known is that American manufacturing is no longer shrinking. Factories have actually added nearly a million jobs in the past seven years.
But the jobs have changed: The new ones generally require advanced education, technological know-how or specialized skills to survive in what are now highly automated workplaces. Yet training opportunities are limited, particularly for older workers.
Cincinnati correspondent Dan Sewell and photographer John Minchillo pinpointed this uneasy mix in southwestern Ohio and proposed an immersive multimedia story to illuminate the trend for readers and viewers. Collaborating with Washington business writer Chris Rugaber, video-first reporter Mike Householder and others, they produced a multifaceted package that made full use of the AP’s global reach, earning this week’s Best of the States prize.
for an exclusive interview with William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, that revealed the Fed will likely pare its bond portfolio and raise interest rates this year. AP also published a 6,100-word transcript. http://bit.ly/2vy0y7t
It’s a difficult thing, interviewing people about their desolation. But an Associated Press team went to Grays Harbor County, Washington, and came away with a deeply reported portrait of a place that had voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1932, but placed a bet on Donald Trump in November as its rescuer from addiction and economic malaise.
Sensitively and penetratingly, the team of Claire Galofaro, David Goldman and Martha Irvine used text, photos and video to tell the tale of an old logging county that “answered Donald Trump's call to the country's forgotten corners.” A half-year into the Republican’s term, they found varying degrees of faith in his ability to make a difference in their lives.
The latest installment in the AP’s Trump Country series is the Beat of the Week.
Since the pandemic took hold in America, myriad stories have covered the broad economic impact of millions laid off or underemployed. But few have captured how the chilling trickle-down effect is changing lives.
Enter Kelli Kennedy. The Florida reporter produced a compelling, poignant story on one man's struggle with the devastating effects of the coronavirus shutdowns. Orlando resident Jeff Lello lost his waiter job, ended up homeless and briefly lived in a tent in the woods.
The story was among AP’s most-read of the week, drawing feedback from readers, colleagues and even politicians.
For a stark narrative of unemployment wrought by the pandemic, Kennedy’s story wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for finding that, contrary to conventional wisdom, increasingly automated e-commerce warehouses are creating rather than killing jobs. http://bit.ly/2zTb34l
for documenting a depressing, little-known trend: Many struggling U.S. factory cities have actually lost a greater proportion of white collar than blue collar jobs.
http://bit.ly/2oUERtyhttp://bit.ly/2DlBbX7
After Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire erupted June 3, sending a fast-moving flow of superheated ash, rock and debris into villages, AP staffers sprang into action. Over the next week, they worked around the clock in difficult and often-perilous conditions to produce all-formats dispatches from the scene and from shelters and funerals. They told the stories of people who had lost dozens of family members in the explosion, authorities’ search for survivors and victims, and relatives’ own return to homes buried up to the rooftops in ash to dig, in many cases with their own hands.
For scoring numerous exclusives that included highly detailed drone video of the disaster and spectacular photos and video, Guatemala-based journalist Sonia Perez, Mexico City-based reporter Mark Stevenson, Bogota camera operator Marko Alvarez, Guatemala photographer Moises Castillo, Peru-based senior photographer Rodrigo Abd, and stringer photographer Luis Soto have earned the Beat of the Week.
for his fascinating story on how Elkhart County, Indiana, grappled with the economic, cultural and moral ramifications of becoming a place known for locking up immigrants. https://bit.ly/2nafiEy
President Donald Trump has long asserted that his tax cuts and other policies would accelerate job growth, which, in turn, would serve the “forgotten” men and women who had helped propel him to the White House in the 2016 election.
Washington, D.C.-based economics reporter Josh Boak wondered: Had that actually occurred so far? And how much was job growth a motivating force for Trump supporters?
Boak hit on a possible way to hold the president’s claims to a fair test. He turned to a relatively obscure report issued by the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, then merged those economic figures with the AP’s 2016 election returns, broken down by county.
The result, under multiple calculations, was clear: The bulk of U.S. hiring under Trump had so far occurred in Democratic counties.
Boak then spent three days in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, an area that had voted decisively for Trump and had lost jobs in the past 12 months. He reported that Republican voters appeared to be motivated more by social issues – opposition to gun control, for example. “Our No. 1 motivating factor,” the county Republican chairman told Boak, “is Second Amendment issues.”
For exclusively documenting how job growth under Trump has disproportionately underserved his geographic base and for illustrating that trend in a community that reflects it, Boak earns this week’s Best of the States award.
for unearthing a document that showed the Trump administration doesn’t consider conserving oil an economic imperative for the U.S., breaking with decades-old policy on conservation. https://bit.ly/2o1DDfU
for revealing that Americans who leave their employers to take jobs elsewhere have been enjoying raises on average that our one-third higher than raises for workers who stay put – the widest gap since the Great Recession. https://bit.ly/2O6qxcV
For several intense weeks, AP’s all-formats Paris team had been contending with the violent street protests of the yellow vest movement. But a new threat to France’s peace suddenly arose when a man opened fire near the well-known Christmas market in Strasbourg.
On the evening of Dec. 11, the gunman shot and fatally wounded five people and injured a dozen more at the market. French authorities soon identified the suspect and said that the attack was being investigated as an act of terrorism. With that, France and Benelux Bureau Chief Angela Charlton and her all-formats crew quickly pivoted from the street protesters to focus on the attack, just as a massive manhunt was getting under way.
After AP confirmed that that police in Strasbourg had shot and killed the suspect on Dec. 13, Charlton scoured online white pages for potential witnesses, reaching a neighbor who, amazingly, was able to share images from directly across the street.
The exclusive video and photos that they negotiated were the result of teamwork and lessons learned from covering past attacks in identifying sources and deploying AP forces. And the close-up images told the story: the shooter’s body is seen slumped in a doorway as police and forensic officers move in.
The content, which had not yet appeared anywhere, was heavily used by broadcast and online clients around the world, both as video and for screengrabs.
For their resourceful, determined efforts to obtain exclusive images on this breaking story, the team of Angela Charlton, Alex Turnbull, Chris Noelting, Mstyslav Chernov, Jeff Schaeffer and Masha Macpherson receives the AP’s Best of the Week award.
First, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake rocked Mexico, killing hundreds. Then, a day later, a category 4 hurricane pummeled Puerto Rico, leaving millions of people without power and with little water.
Two major calamities, one sterling response: Staffers of The Associated Press went to heroic lengths to tell the world the stories of two places battered by disaster. Their efforts were led to extraordinary achievements – in text, photos and video – and the Beat of the Week.
