Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Divided America: The changing face of U.S. immigration

for an all-formats story showing how an influx of educated Asian immigrants is transforming the nation in ways largely ignored by today’s heated political rhetoric. The story, part of the Divided America series, punctured myths about U.S. immigration. Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed a sidebar explaining a crucial but often overlooked fact in the immigration debate: An estimated 40 percent of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally overstayed visas. http://apne.ws/2e1Hx3K

Best of the States

Innocent suspects face terrible choice: plead guilty or risk life in prison

It’s hard to imagine why anyone would plead guilty to a crime they didn’t commit. But as Richmond-based reporter Alanna Durkin Richer and Miami legal affairs reporter Curt Anderson found, it happens more often than you might think.

Digging through publicly available data on exonerations, they found alarming statistics: More than 300 of the roughly 1,900 people who have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989 pleaded guilty. So Richer and Anderson set out to explain why anyone would plead guilty to a crime he or she didn’t commit ...

Best of the Week — First Winner

Historic presidential race call followed months of prep, hours of analysis

When Election Day arrived, just about everyone in politics had assumed for weeks that Hillary Clinton would soon be the next president. All it would take was California's trove of 55 electoral votes and a series of easy wins elsewhere to push her past the 270 she would need.

Not David Pace, Stephen Ohlemacher and AP's team of race callers and decision analysts.

They had prepared for months for all contingencies _ including a race that wasn't a blowout but a collection of close races that would demand deep analysis of AP's vote count, exit polls and the history of voting patterns state by state. To call the race for president before all others, and to do so with the unfailing accuracy the world expects from the AP on Election Day, would require excellence at calling those tight races that go deep into the night.

They did just that. And their call of the assumption-shattering result earns the Beat of the Week.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Campaign's disdain for civility could leave lasting damage

for examining the unusually harsh and coarse language used in the presidential campaign, especially by Donald Trump and his supporters, and its potential for long-term harm to the U.S. Quoting authorities on political speech and electoral history, he reported that incivility reached new lows in 2016 and may signal worse to come. http://apne.ws/2eDOyKO

Best of the States

Lack of choice in health insurance markets a growing problem

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is one of the most divisive political issues in America. So when word began circulating last summer of potential double-digit premium hikes, Washington health care reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar knew he'd have a major story on his hands. With those price hikes would come renewed fears insurers would leave the program.

Looking ahead to the autumn release of the data, Alonso-Zaldivar and data journalism Meghan Hoyer starting laying the groundwork for AP to offer something distinctive, that no other news organization would have.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

In year of 3,000 shootings, a teen faces life beyond bullet

for an all-formats package looking at Chicago’s gun violence from the perspective of a resilient 18-year-old who was paralyzed after an apparent mistaken-identity shooting. http://abcn.ws/2ezQqjT

Best of the Week — First Winner

Divided America: Seeing options shrinking, white men ask why

As the bitter election season winds down, a recurring theme has been the conviction among many white men that they have been losing ground in society. National writer Matt Sedensky wanted to find a way to tell their story for a concluding installment in the series Divided America.

The yearlong assessment of America’s national disunity comprised more than two dozen deeply reported, multi-format stories exploring splits along racial, religious and socio-economic lines, as well as clashing attitudes on issues ranging from gun regulation to immigration.

Sedensky focused on the views of white men turning toward Republican nominee Donald Trump and rejecting Democrat Hillary Clinton. He listened to the voices on a call-in radio show in Texas _ both host and callers revealing their angst _ and then, through backgrounding interviews with them and reporting on research, showed why these men feel as they do.

Best of the States

Jailed without a Judge: AP reporter tells the story of woman jailed for months without due process

Reporter Jeff Amy in Jackson, Mississippi, often combs through recent federal court decisions, upcoming cases and random filings. Every once in a while that produces a whopper of a story. The story of Jessica Jauch, who was jailed for 96 days in Mississippi without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail, was the result of such legwork.

“Oh, my God,” he thought, as he pored over court documents that laid out, in great detail how Jauch was charged with a felony based on a secretly recorded video and how when she finally got a hearing and prosecutors watched the video _ in which she committed no crime _ the case fell apart.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

For Clinton, a daily dose of faith with the politics

for an in-depth look at Hillary Clinton’s faith, including the fact that one of her pastors sends the lifelong Methodist an email every day at 5 a.m. with Scripture pertaining to her trials on the campaign trail. http://apne.ws/2dqLqMC

Best of the Week — First Winner

An accidental shooting kills a child every other day

The tragic stories pop up frequently in local media: a curious toddler gets hold of a gun and accidentally shoots himself or someone else. But how often does that happen? Under what circumstances? And what children are most at risk?

In a new investigative partnership, a team of reporters from the AP and USA TODAY Network spent six months seeking answers to those questions and others about accidental shootings involving minors. What they discovered is horrifying: A child dies every other day of an accidental shooting in the United States. What's more, the federal government significantly undercounts the problem.

Best of the States

A distinctive retelling of a shocking tragedy

As nurse practitioners, Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill played a pivotal role in the lives of many people in rural Holmes County, Mississippi, which with 44 percent of its residents living in poverty ranks as the seventh-poorest county in America, according to the Census Bureau.

So when the two Roman Catholic nuns were found stabbed to death in the home they shared, the news devastated friends and families, as well as the many people who came to rely on the pair for critical, life-saving medical care.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Auto reporter uncovers government accusations against American air bag maker

for uncovering the government's mounting complaints against ARC Automotive Inc. He discovered the scoop while digging through routine filings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; they detailed the company's stonewalling and refusal to cooperate with a U.S. investigation into a fatal air bag death that could affect 8 million other cars. http://apne.ws/2en0EIO

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP: 'Apprentice' cast and crew say Trump was lewd and sexist

Donald Trump's public comments about women have been a familiar theme in the tumultuous presidential campaign. But what had he said behind the scenes on "The Apprentice," the TV show that made him a household name?

That's the question AP’s Garance Burke set out to answer. Combining shoe-leather reporting with an adept use of social media, the San Francisco-based national investigative reporter tracked down more than 20 people willing to talk about the Republican nominee's language on the set. They recalled Trump making demeaning, crude and sexist comments toward and about female cast and crew members, and that he discussed which contestants he would like to have sex with.

Best of the States

Lead crisis in housing project was actually no surprise

The down-at-the-heels industrial city of East Chicago, Indiana, made headlines around the world in August after the mayor ordered 1,000 people to get out of a 40-year-old public-housing complex because of lead contamination.

Many residents and observers expressed surprise: How could such a problem go overlooked for so many decades?

The Chicago bureau’s Sara Burnett and Jason Keyser teamed up for several weeks of intensive document and street reporting. What they found was as disturbing as the original news: The hazard shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone – because the housing complex had been built on the former site of a lead-products factory.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Pro-painkiller echo chamber shaped policy amid drug epidemic

Combine the capabilities of The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity, and this is what you can get: A two-part blockbuster that exposed the efforts of the opioid industry and allied groups to stymie limits on the use of its powerful drugs, and detailed how they spent more than $880 million on lobbying and political contributions over the past decade.

The genesis of the project was a conversation between Tom Verdin, editor of AP’s state government team, and Geoff Mulvihill, a member of that team. Mulvihill, based in Mount Laurel, N.J., has covered the opioid crisis sweeping the nation, and the two hit upon the idea of trying to determine the extent of the pharmaceutical industry’s exerting influence in state legislatures across the country.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Docs detail government damage of Trail of Tears

for revealing that part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail had been damaged by the Forest Service, which two years earlier had touted the purchase of the property as a way to protect land considered sacred by native Americans. http://bit.ly/2d45rLg

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

American Unity and Children of Sept 11.

for two engaging pieces on the 9/11 anniversary. The first, built around video interviews with regular Americans, examined how the sense of national unity that existed after the attacks has disappeared; the other, in vignette style, focused on children who lost parents during the attacks. http://bit.ly/2cavGzY http://bit.ly/2cqA8YE http://apne.ws/2cmLRKi

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

After 15 years, last artifacts of 9/11 have been given away

for spotlighting the last remaining artifact from the Sept. 11 attacks among thousands preserved and distributed for memorials. http://apne.ws/2cqWmx1

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Yosemite adding 400 acres of meadow, forest

for source work that allowed him to break the news that Yosemite National Park had added 400 acres, its most significant expansion in nearly 70 years. http://bit.ly/2cuCJ9V

Best of the Week — First Winner

4 Hours in Huntington: how the heroin epidemic choked a city

The scene, presented in the most vivid close-up, shows a paramedic frantically pushing an IV full of an opioid blocker into the vein of a woman turning blue and barely breathing. Then the radio squawks: Two more overdoses just reported. Where will Claire Galofaro’s riveting narrative go from here?

“The woman’s eyes blinked open” she writes next. Then: “Red lights on the phone at the 911 dispatch center flashed faster and faster until all 16 lines were screaming. They called from the dining room of a rickety house, the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, the bathroom of a gas station. `People are dying everywhere,’ one caller said.”