Best of the Week — First Winner

Deep reporting on a failed KKK murder plot reveals white supremacists working in Florida prison

Some stories just stick with a journalist. For AP investigative reporter Jason Dearen, a sparse 2015 announcement — three currrent or former Florida prison guards, identified by the FBI as Ku Klux Klansmen, had been arrested for plotting a former inmate’s murder — sparked a yearslong reporting effort.

Dearen’s big break came last summer when trial transcripts revealed an FBI informant was the star witness against the KKK members, his secret recordings providing a rare, detailed look at the inner workings of the klan cell and the domestic terrorism probe. Dearen and visual journalist David Goldman retraced the klansmen’s steps through Palatka, Florida, then producers Marshall Ritzel, Samantha Shotzbarger and Peter Hamlin stepped in to create a riveting online presentation.

The resulting all-formats package had immediate impact, with Florida papers featuring it on home pages and front pages, and prompting calls for investigations into white supremacy among prison workers. The story found 360,000 readers on AP News and kept them there for an average of more than five minutes — longer than any other AP story in memory.

For dogged reporting and an immersive all-formats narrative that exposes a salient, timely issue, Dearan, Goldman, Ritzel, Shotzbarger and Hamlin win AP’s Best of the Week award.

Best of the States

Smart prep, sharp execution put AP out front on obit of prominent civil rights leader Gloria Richardson

Among the toughest obits to write on the fly are those for people who were hugely influential but rarely heard from in their later years. AP’s Brian Witte, however, was fully prepared when he got an exclusive tip on a Friday evening that prominent civil rights figure Gloria Richardson had died at 99.

Witte, AP’s Annapolis, Maryland, correspondent, used carefully crafted, detailed prep and source work to break news of the death of the first Black woman to lead a sustained desegregation movement outside the South. Thanks in part to a striking 1963 AP photo of Richardson pushing away the bayonet of a National Guardsman, she came to symbolize fearlessness among civil rights activists.

Witte’s prep included an interview with Richardson’s biographer, building enough trust for the author to email him with first word of her death. He persuaded the biographer to share family contacts, scoring quotes that forced many outlets to cite AP. Witte’s story, linked with archival photos, hit the wire early Friday evening, beating all competition and receiving strong play.

For insightful, resourceful reporting that puts Richardson's significant legacy back in the public eye, Witte earns this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the States

Intern’s rape accusation against Idaho lawmaker prompts AP national review of state legislatures

When a 19-year-old legislative intern reported that a state lawmaker in Idaho raped her, she almost immediately faced a campaign of harassment from right-wing groups in the state, and even from other state representatives, who publicized her identity against her will. A legislative panel then forced her to testify from behind a screen at an ethics hearing, after which she was followed and subjected to still further abuse by the accused lawmaker’s supporters.

The sordid story of the young woman’s ordeal was covered with sensitivity by Boise correspondent Rebecca Boone in a series of pieces that included an exclusive interview with the alleged victim, and it prompted a wider look by AP’s State Government Team at allegations of sexual misconduct in statehouses around the country. That story, led by correspondent David Lieb and Report for America data journalist Camille Fassett, provided state-by-state details to AP customers and revealed public allegations against at least 109 state lawmakers in 40 states.

For aggressive yet respectful coverage that put one woman’s voice at the center of the story while providing distinctive national context, Boone, Lieb and Fassett share this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP investigates Russia’s cover-up of deaths caused by dam explosion in Ukraine

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.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: WHO knew of sex misconduct by personnel in Congo

revealed that, contrary to World Health Organization claims, WHO senior management did know about at least two cases of doctors accused of sex abuse and misconduct during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but did not fire or even apparently discipline them.Health and science reporter Cheng advanced the story by putting names, for the first time, to the implicated doctors and a senior manager. She discovered that WHO managers even witnessed an agreement in which a WHO doctor agreed to pay a young woman he had allegedly impregnated.While Cheng worked with her sources, Congo stringer Kudra Maliro tracked down several alleged victims of both doctors, adding text and images. The investigation was based on interviews with dozens of WHO staffers, Ebola officials in Congo, private emails, legal documents and recordings of internal meetings obtained by the AP.The story drew strong and immediate international response. Paula Donovan, co-director of a group that tracks sex abuse, wrote: “Never ... have I seen such a detailed exposé containing so many unanswerable indictments against so many UN personnel. You’ve broken real ground here.”https://aplink.news/f39https://aplink.video/pk5

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Deep AP reporting on NFL’s race-adjusted brain injury settlements

reported that thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the use of “race-norming,” a practice the NFL has insisted on using in the league’s $1 billion brain injury settlement. Black NFL players delivered some 50,000 petitions to a federal court to end the practice.The algorithm used by the NFL assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice went unnoticed until 2018.Dale and Smith recognized that the story extends far beyond sports and money, to discrimination and racial injustice. Their deeply reported story quotes neurology experts who said the practice, sometimes used in medicine as a rough proxy for socioeconomic factors that can affect a person’s health, should not be used in the settlement because it has the effect of systematically discriminating against Black players. The story played widely; CBSN devoted eight minutes to the piece, calling it “a damning report.” https://aplink.news/rcp

Best of the Week — First Winner

Only on AP: Heartrending images capture children across the globe who lost parents to COVID

Rarely does AP’s Best of the Week award go to an editor. But this week — a particularly strong one for AP with multiple exclusives — the honor is truly deserved by Top Stories Hub photo editor Alyssa Goodman. Goodman was the driving force behind “Kids Left Behind,” an extraordinarily moving photo package that takes an intimate look at children who have lost parents to the pandemic.

Goodman coordinated with photographers around the globe to find the young subjects, get permission to photograph and interview them, then make their portraits in a cohesive style.

The result was one of the most compelling packages AP has done in recent years, the photos complemented by poignant text moving many readers to tears, with stories ranging from a 10-year old in India who lost both parents in a matter of weeks, to video of a California 13-year-old performing the song she composed for her father’s funeral, on the guitar he gave her days before he died.

For generating an inspired and challenging project, handling it with sensitivity and tenaciously seeing it through in collaboration with global colleagues, Alyssa Goodman wins AP’s Best of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Fast response, sensitive coverage put AP ahead on shooting by deputy

responded quickly in all formats after a Black man in rural eastern North Carolina was shot and killed by deputies, the team deftly leading multiple news cycles by staying ahead on spot developments while telling the story of the man’s life. The quick coverage was key as authorities released few details.Hours after Andrew Brown Jr. was killed by deputies serving a warrant, AP was on the ground in Elizabeth City with text, photo and video staff, gathering a key eyewitness account and protester reaction while also interviewing family members.The following day, AP delivered a sensitive account that captured the complexity of Brown’s life, with family describing him as a proud father with a beaming smile. That story, along with the first day story, captured front pages around North Carolina and beyond. AP continued to lead with detail and context in subsequent cycles, drawing credit from other news outlets.The FBI has since launched a civil rights probe into Brown’s killing.https://bit.ly/3xtUL0Ehttps://bit.ly/3gHWv08https://bit.ly/3vobAIhhttps://bit.ly/3eECapO

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

50 years after the US declared war on drugs, AP examines racial disparities

used data and on-the-ground reporting to explore the fallout of America’s war on drugs, launched 50 years ago this summer by President Richard Nixon.Race and ethnicity reporter Morrison, joined by data journalist Kastanis and multiformat journalist Breed, set out to tell a story of the toll that harsh prison sentences and lifetime restrictions post-release have taken on Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities.To do so, the AP reviewed federal and state data, finding that the Black incarceration rate in America surged from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 in 2000, and the rate for the Latino population grew from 208 per 100,000 people to 615, while the white incarceration rate grew at a more modest rate, from 103 per100,000 people to 242.But beyond the data, the AP trio put names and a face to those caught up in this grinding war with no clear winners but many losers. The story’s lead subject, Alton Lucas, could have had a life of touring nationally and internationally with his DJ friend, but instead discovered drugs and the drug trade at the height of the war on drugs. As a crack cocaine addict involved in trafficking, the North Carolina man faced decades in prison at a time when the drug abuse and violence plaguing Black communities were not seen as the public health issue that opioids are today. The combination of Morrison’s deep reporting, Breed’s photos and video, and Kastanis’ data analysis, accompanied by graphics, resulted in a newsy, nuanced package, rich with historical context.https://aplink.news/k6jhttps://aplink.video/017

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP celebrates 75th anniversary of Top 25 men’s basketball poll with all-time No. 1

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

Best of the States

Only on AP: A report of college rape, a Facebook admission years later and a woman’s fight for justice

“So I raped you.” 

That message on Facebook, years after Shannon Keeler left college, sent her back to the night as a freshman that changed her life. It also was the basis for her continued fight for justice, as well as this exclusive, powerful examination of campus sexual assault. AP’s Maryclaire Dale, a legal affairs reporter in Philadelphia, and video journalist Allen Breed interviewed Keeler and others, including a student who befriended Keeler on the night of the 2013 attack. That woman, Katayoun Amir-Aslani, told her story, too: She was raped later, by a different man.

The deeply reported all-formats package sheds light on often unreported college rapes, and the systemic obstacles students like Keeler face in their search for justice when they do report. The story drew major attention on AP News, where it was the most-read story for days. Other media rushed to match it, and Keeler has since told her story on network TV.

For sensitive and insightful reporting on a system that one of the victims describes as “broken,” Dale and Breed receive this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: Bodies in Sudan river latest evidence of ethnic killings in Tigray

were the first to report on dozens of bodies, many found mutilated and with their hands bound, found floating in the border river that separates Sudan from the conflict-torn Ethiopian province of Tigray. The bodies are evidence of continued atrocities being committed on the other side of the border amid a communications blackout and virtually zero access to Tigray, where ethnic killings by Ethiopian forces and their allies have frequently been reported during the nine-month war.Strong source work and compelling visual storytelling put the AP well ahead on the story. Tigrayan refugees in Sudan alerted reporters Anna and Magdy to the appearance of bodies, and a refugee surgeon traveled to the site to get images. Magdy also got key confirmation from a Sudanese official — countering Ethiopian government claims that such reports are Tigrayan propaganda. Anna also spoke to refugee doctors for more details.AP broke the story hours ahead of major competitors and was also first with visuals from the border area — the surgeon’s images obtained by Magdy and a strong pieced-together visual narrative produced and shot by video freelancer Awad. He was the first journalist to reach the scene to visually confirm at least six graves with witness accounts, which Anna wrote up as an Only on AP text story.The work had a major impact in Europe, where more than 40 TV networks used it.https://aplink.news/bnr

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

COVID surge overwhelms a Louisiana hospital; AP is there

produced a timely, moving, all-formats story from a Louisiana COVID-19 ward with a lightning turnaround, getting her video, text and photos to the wire the day after she spent hours at the hospital.Plaisance, New Orleans-based video journalist, was given access to a hospital intensive care unit in Jefferson, Louisiana, expecting to get a few comments and some b-roll. Instead, she ended up spending the most of the day there, interviewing exhausted staff and recovering COVID victims. She spoke to a doctor who was emptying garbage bins and bathing patients to relieve the pressure on nurses. She spoke to a nurse who lost his own father to COVID, and a patient — also a nurse — who didn't get vaccinated and wants to make sure others don’t follow her lead.After leaving the hospital, Plaisance immediately went to work cutting video and writing the text story. By the following afternoon her work was on the wire capturing the desperation and urgency at the hospital.The package drew attention amid the current spike in COVID cases. Other news outlets noticed: After Plaisance’s piece appeared, the hospital became the subject of other reporters’ coverage.https://aplink.news/e0uhttps://aplink.video/p2n

Best of the States

A photographer’s affecting portrait of Korean American seniors, fearful amid anti-Asian violence

The Koreatown area of Los Angeles can be a challenging place to report — many residents are hesitant to speak to the press. That makes what Los Angeles-based photographer Jae Hong pulled off that much more impressive. 

Hong, a Korean American who moved to LA as a teenager, had recently spent a year on assignment in Tokyo. When he returned to the U.S., he was astonished by the increased aggression he saw toward Asian Americans, who were being blamed by some for COVID-19. 

After much outreach and many conversations with the local Korean community, he found a few families willing to let him into their lives. The end result — Hong’s somber photos and poignant text — is a compelling portrait of a community experiencing very real fear amid attacks targeting Asians. 

For timely, revealing enterprise reporting in both text and photos, Jae Hong wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Speed, planning and AP’s footprint deliver winning coverage of scathing report into Uvalde massacre

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

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Using a nearly disappeared homegrown art form to document life in Afghanistan

AP employed the traditional Afghan “box camera” to document how life has changed in Afghanistan in peacetime, for better and worse, two years after U.S. troops left and the Taliban returned to power.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Dissolving Trump’s business empire would stand apart in history of NY fraud law

AP’s exclusive, deep-dive analysis of Donald Trump’s civil fraud case in New York found that if the judge carries through with his sentence to “dissolve” the former president’s business empire, it would stand apart in nearly 70 years of the state’s powerful anti-fraud law. Read more

Best of the States

AP marks 600,000-death milestone with distinctive data-driven look at COVID racial inequality

The 600,000th COVID-19 death in the U.S. presented a big challenge: How to bring fresh perspective to yet another milestone, just months after we crossed the 400,000 and 500,000 marks. The trio of medical writer Carla K. Johnson, data journalist Angel Kastanis and reporter Olga Rodriguez met the challenge and then some, delivering a data-driven Only on AP package that showed how the virus has exploited racial inequality as it cut a swath through the country.

Kastanis analyzed demographic data of all 600,000 deaths to show the uneven toll during the various phases of the pandemic, breaking down the disproportionate effect on the Black and Latino communities. Rodriguez reported on a family that led the story, while Johnson served as the lead writer, rounding out the piece with medical analysis, perspective and reporting. Contributions by AP’s top stories team included an engaging interactive map of the U.S. showing the virus advancing geographically to 600,000 souls.

The package resonated with readers and customers on the AP News platform, where it was among the top stories, as well as on social media and on newspaper front pages around the country.

For a shining example of AP collaboration across teams, using sharp data analysis and on-the-ground reporting to reveal the pandemic’s impact on communities of color, the team of Johnson, Kastanis and Rodriguez receives this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP finds college activists pushing for reparations over past injustice

broke new ground on a competitive and fast-evolving national story: Amid accelerating efforts to pay reparations to Blacks and Indigenous Americans for injustices suffered over centuries, some of the most strident arguments for amends were coming from U.S. college campuses.Boston reporter Marcelo found that nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd sparked the latest national reckoning on racism, student and community activists from New England to the Deep South are demanding institutions take more ambitious steps to atone for past sins — from colonial-era slavery to more recent campus expansion projects that have pushed out entire communities of color.Marcelo anchored the project from Providence, Rhode Island, home to Brown University. The Ivy League school released an exhaustive historical report in 2006 and dedicated a slavery memorial in 2014, among continuing efforts to promote racial equity.Marcelo’s reporting was powerfully illustrated with visuals from Boston video journalist Rodrique Ngowi, photographer Steven Senne, as well as work from photographers Jacquelyn Martin in Washington, John Bazemore in Atlanta and Steve Helber in Richmond, Virginia.https://aplink.news/bdxhttps://aplink.video/p00

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Deep preparation and experience put AP ahead on Mladic verdict

teamed up to provide exceptional coverage in all formats of the final verdict for Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, in which U.N. judges rejected his appeals on charges of orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, affirming his life sentence.Chief correspondent Corder worked closely with AP colleagues in the Balkans in the days leading up to the verdict to prepare for all the possible outcomes, preparing alerts and urgents for each, as well as for the possibility that victims’ groups could leak the verdict early. Knowing that the victims’ representatives are not always accurate, Corder held off on the alert until AP had the full verdict from the judges, and other major world media followed his lead.Photographer Dejong, who had covered Mladic’s appearances at the court over several years, patiently waited for the one moment during the long verdict when the ex-commander made a hand gesture — holding up his fingers as if clicking a shutter to mimic the photographers fixed on him. The image circled the world.AP had four different live shots up for a good part of the day on AP Direct and Live Choice, compared with a single courtroom feed that a major competitor accessed at the last minute. AP put out a video edit of the verdict 44 minutes ahead of the competition, and was much faster with reaction from the victims and their families in Sarajevo and Srebrenica, and from Serb veterans, comrades of Mladic and people in Belgrade.https://aplink.news/h1rhttps://aplink.video/ub0https://aplink.video/rz4https://aplink.video/gmx