get AP access to thousands of pages of documents that gave a glimpse of the federal government’s haphazard handling of nuclear waste in the St. Louis area.Read more.
AP broke news and drove the coverage about the GOP threat to impeach a state Supreme Court justice before she’s even ruled on a case.Read more
A late-night leap into action and spot-on prep delivered AP a decisive audience win on Jimmy Buffett’s death.Read more
AP was the first media to write the story of the likely cause of the Maui fires — bare copper electrical line that sparked on contact and power poles that couldn’t stand up to the wind.Read more
AP showed how and why a major influx of Mauritanians is arriving in the United States.Read more
When the pope visited an impoverished suburban neighborhood of Lisbon, during his trip to mark the first massive gathering of young Catholics since the pandemic started, AP was among the few who noticed a group of people among the crowd that had rainbow flags and distinctive signs identifying them as members of the LGBTQ+ community.Read more
Enormously popular when it cleared Congress 50 years ago, the Endangered Species Act has become one of the most controversial U.S. environmental protection laws.Read more
Migration-focused video journalist Renata Brito in Barcelona took note of a heartbreaking photo on social media to spark a story about the situation at the Tunisia-Libya border — and she used her years of source work, expertise on the border and help from around AP to confirm the story.
On July 19, the photo of a woman and child lying dead, barefoot and face down in the tawny desert sand began circulating on social media. It was retweeted by activists who accused Tunisia of abandoning migrants to their fates on the other side of Tunisia’s desert border with Libya.
But little was known about the photo or the stories of the two who had died.
On social media, some said the photo spoke to that growing crisis, but others insisted it was an old image from another country.
Three days after the photo surfaced, a source of Brito’s in Libya messaged her, saying he knew the woman and child in the photo. From afar, Brito had developed a relationship with the source for years. For this story, Brito asked the source: How did he know it was them? Could she speak to friends or family? With whom did they travel?
That resulted in a tale of dashed hope and tragedy as told to the AP by the late woman’s husband, with additional details and key context contributed by Elaine Ganley and Samy Magdy, who together are Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP spent months reporting the issue of tornado deaths in mobile homes and why they still happen despite being known and avoidable.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
documented how Florida’s new transgender care laws on children were affecting trans adults.Read more.
It was one of those stories that aren’t a secret, but nobody had dug in to see how it was playing out —until Laurie Kellman started to.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.
told the story of a stumbling start to a historic wildfire mitigation effort intended to avoid a repeat of the climate-driven conflagrations that destroyed Western communities in recent years.Read more.
worked together to follow up on their earlier newsbreak of a massive theft of food aid allegedly orchestrated by Ethiopian officials to feed fighting forces and sell the food in markets.Read more.
AP learned from sources that U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped giving appointments for asylum through the CBP One mobile app in Laredo, Texas.Read more
AP gained unprecedented access to key sources in stories on underreported and often marginalized groups in the small Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda.Read more
After a monthslong analysis, the AP revealed that at least 10% of $4 trillion in federal COVID-19 relief money was stolen or misspent.
The story was sparked by a simple question in January from Acting Global Investigations Editor Alison Kodjak: How much relief money was stolen? Richard Lardner, of the global investigations team, teamed up with climate reporter Jennifer McDermott and data team reporter Aaron Kessler to get an answer. They conducted scores of interviews, read dozens of government indictments and reports and tracked down experts.
In the end, they determined scam artists potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding, and another $123 billion was wasted or misspent — a combined loss of 10% of the relief aid the U.S. government has so far disbursed. Senior video producer Jeannie Ohm and motion graphics designer Eva Malek created an animated video explainer, narrated by Kessler, that succinctly laid out how easy it was for fraudsters to make off with so much money. Multimedia editor Kevin Vineys created a series of compelling graphics that helped break down government spending and potential theft.
For spending months investigating and documenting how much of the federal government’s $4.2 trillion in COVID-19 relief was looted or misspent, Lardner, McDermott, Kessler, Vineys and Malek earn Best of the Week — First Winners.
developed a relationship with Pat Robertson’s spokesman over several years that set AP up for a speed win on the religious and political figure’s obit.Read more.
