Ellen Knickmeyer and Mike Blood, reporters, San Francisco, for reporting that California officials lacked technology to monitor a crumbling spillway after dark at Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest dam, during a near catastrophe. https://apnews.com/a0e3a36b699b4b539f85ea8074b4508...
for solid source work in scoring an exclusive interview with a Navy SEAL injured in the hunt for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. https://apnews.com/aad5bef14ca94edc8176e8839634cfc...
for spearheading a nationwide effort by AP sportswriters to report on how universities with top basketball programs were responding to a federal corruption investigation of the sport. http://bit.ly/2yOl31X
for breaking the news that seafood processed by North Koreans working in China is making its way to the U.S., Canada and the EU, and that most of the money goes back to the North Korean government. http://bit.ly/2wxL6WM
for revealing that a series of mystery illnesses in Cuba had started by hitting undercover CIA agents, and that yet another American had been confirmed as a victim. http://bit.ly/2wO5KlF
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.
for back-to-back news beats concerning Pope Francis. She was first to report that the pope was being formally accused by conservative critics of heresy. She also reported that his advisers were taking up the long-taboo issue of providing better care for the children of Catholic priests. http://bit.ly/2xIBeuX http://bit.ly/2xMFBXr
for giving AP the first solid live shot on the scene in the story of a possible terrorist attack on a London subway train. http://bit.ly/2hfnHXy http://ti.me/2fbRPOZ
for showing how more colleges are taking video gaming seriously as a varsity sport, in a trend so strong that the NCAA is considering whether it should play a role. http://bit.ly/2jKI6nX
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 a multiformat story establishing exclusively that dog attacks on postal workers were at their highest in three decades, in part due to an online sales boom. http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/
for being first to report that Republican Congressman Lou Barletta, an early Trump supporter, will try to win the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Bob Casey. http://bit.ly/2uzDQI9
for being first to report that workers at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., had voted against forming a union – one of two scoops on the day of the vote. http://bit.ly/2vP349F
for using sources and their own personal experience to show how the devastating Detroit riots in 1967 changed lives and the city. http://trib.in/2tHrZYi
for being one of the first journalists on the scene when a man drove a van into a group of worshippers after late-night prayers outside a London mosque. Negas streamed live images via the Bambuser app beating AP's competitors by at least 45 minutes and even supplied live video to AP's U.K. Partner SKY News before they went live from the scene. http://bit.ly/2tpWx40
A video beat of 15 minutes on a terrorism story in the heart of a European capital? Footage showing militants in Asia actually plotting an attack? On two continents in the same week, Associated Press journalists obtained these exclusives through remarkable ingenuity and persistence.
Their efforts are rare co-winners of the Beat of the Week.
It began with a photograph showing one of the London Bridge attackers lying dead with a police officer standing over him. The Associated Press had bought it from a freelancer and now wanted to interview him. When it proved difficult to reach him by phone, AP producer Natalia Gohl friended him on Facebook and discovered something even more extraordinary: nine minutes of harrowing video of police hunting for the attackers that he streamed live during the assault.
Gohl’s discovery – the feed was private and had only a few hundred views – and the intense negotiations that followed to obtain the video led to a global exclusive. It is the Beat of the Week.
for an exclusive interview with the last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster ahead of the 80th anniversary of the tragedy. http://apne.ws/2qUeszf
for exclusively reporting the latest updates in the military's investigation into the nude photo-sharing scandal at a rare visit to the base at Quantico. http://apne.ws/2q4aaUG
for getting word of a highly classified and highly sensitive U.S. intelligence conclusion that Russia had foreknowledge of Syria's chemical weapons attack. http://apne.ws/2o1Cjs3