Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP gives voice to evacuees of Mariupol steel plant siege

were determined to capture for all formats the stories of evacuees from the the bombarded Mariupol steel plant, delivering the first extended account of life in the bunkers under the plant as war raged overhead.In Zaporizhzhia the team staked out a car park for days, poised for a “safe passage” operation evacuating civilians from the besieged plant. When the buses arrived, AP’s coverage included extensive live video, and the following day the journalists spent two hours with a woman and her family who described their life below ground — and the feeling of “visiting the sky” when they would dare emerge from the bunkers.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Exclusive: Bodies of Mariupol steel-plant defenders returned

teamed up to scoop Ukrainian media and the international press corps by revealing the return of Ukrainian fighters’ remains following the weekslong last stand at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.Leicester first learned of the return of the defenders’ bodies while interviewing a soldier for another story. He and Arhirova then pursued multiple sources in a difficult environment, including family members, unit commanders and spokespersons, confirming on the record, ahead of the competition, that several hundred bodies had been swapped with the Russians, including dozens from a regiment that took a lead in defending the complex during the Russian siege of the port city.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Analysis: Hundreds of companies avoid Trump steel tariffs

for a data analysis story showing that despite tough talk on trade, President Donald Trump’s administration has granted hundreds of companies permission to import millions of tons of steel made in China, Japan and other countries — without paying the hefty tariff he put in place to protect U.S. manufacturers and jobs. https://bit.ly/2DVf5wE

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP out front on Trump order to meatpacking plants

posed a question to President Donald Trump about meat shortages that led to an early briefing and a solid news beat for AP on Trump’s order that meat processing plants must stay open. https://bit.ly/2Wx1Hbp

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP gives voice to Ohioans leaving homes for semiconductor plant

delivered an all-formats package weaving together the personal, political and economic implications of a planned $20 billion Intel semiconductor manufacturing complex in rural Johnstown, Ohio, where homes are being demolished to make way for the project that will bring jobs to the “Silicon Heartland.”Knowing that customers look to the AP for this kind of business enterprise story, the journalists set out to illustrate the changing landscape around the project, literally and figuratively, as two Intel factories are expected to open in 2025 on the nearly 1,000-acre site. Framing the coverage, the team interviewed the extended family of 85-year-old Tressie Corsi at her longtime home, grounding the all-formats package in the lives of those most directly affected by the Intel project.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP scoops competition on major union election at Mississippi auto plant

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

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP dominates coverage of deadly chemical plant explosion in Spain

for quick response and dominant coverage of a deadly explosion and fire at a petrochemical plant in Tarragona, Spain, that killed three and injured seven. Tipped off by an alert on SAM, a global monitoring tool on social media in which AP is an investor, chief correspondent Parra alerted other formats as he worked to confirm the breaking news. Format leaders in turn alerted video journalists and freelancers who raced to the scene and secured rights to security camera video of the explosion. AP provided unmatched live coverage of a briefing by Spanish officials, and the strong AP coverage led video and photo play in Spain and in newspapers in Europe and around the world. https://bit.ly/37y1SYB

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

APNewsbreak: NRC proposes fewer inspections at US nuclear plants

for using a tip from a nuclear regulator – whom she had worked long and hard to develop as a source – to break the news that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is recommending that the agency cut back on inspections at the country’s nuclear reactors, a cost-cutting move promoted by the nuclear power industry but denounced by opponents as a threat to public safety. The agency quietly slipped the recommendation onto its website without any public notice. https://bit.ly/2JBoRIA

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Closing of coal plant on tribal land upends a community and a culture

Coal-burning generating plants are closing in the U.S., and coal mines are shutting down amid worries of climate change and the new economies of renewable energy.

Against that backdrop, correspondents Felicia Fonseca and Susan Montoya Bryan traveled to Arizona’s remote Navajo Generating Station to the tell the story of workers, their families, a community and the tribal nations who have depended on coal and are feeling the profound effects of the plant’s impending closure. 

In their all-formats package, the pair let workers explain what they were losing, and how the local economy is taking a massive hit with millions of dollars of revenue no longer flowing to the Hopi and Navajo tribes.  

For a comprehensive, compelling look at the impact of coal’s decline on a community and a culture, Fonseca and Montoya earn this week’s Best of the States award. 

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: FDA skipped most baby formula plant inspections in 2020

turned seemingly mundane testimony of a legislative hearing into a timely scoop, breaking the news that the Food and Drug Administration had skipped nearly all its inspections of baby formula plants during the first year of COVID, likely contributing to the severe shortage of formula in the U.S. and raising questions about what the federal government could have done to prevent it.Using information he gleaned from Capitol Hill testimony by the three top baby formula manufacturers, Washington-based health writer Perrone identified the companies’ plants in the FDA’s online database and discovered the agency hadn’t inspected Abbott’s plant — responsible for a recall of formula that exacerbated the nationwide shortage — for two years between 2019 and 2021. In fact, the FDA later acknowledged only three of the nation’s 23 formula plants were inspected in the first year of the pandemic.Read more

Best of the States

APNewsBreak: Military prosecutors sent tracking software to defense team, reporter

Los Angeles courts reporter Brian Melley was enjoying a Sunday afternoon when a longtime legal source reached out with a remarkable tip in the case of Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL facing a court martial on charges he murdered a teenage Islamic State fighter in Iraq in 2017.

The source told Melley that military prosecutors, frustrated by leaks in the case, planted tracking software in emails sent to defense lawyers and a reporter. The unsophisticated software was quickly discovered by the recipients.

Melley worked up the story, including an interview with a military law expert who thought the tactic was ethically, legally and intellectually dubious. His story hit the wire the next morning, quickly gaining traction online. AP was widely credited everywhere it appeared and no major media outlet matched it.

For giving AP an exclusive on an important military justice story, Melley wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

An odd trend in wheat country: not much wheat

for digging into crop reports to find that farmers had planted the fewest acres of wheat in nearly a century, choosing instead to plant an odd array of specialty crops, from chickpeas to hops. http://bit.ly/2xqHMxN

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP report: Today's energy system could blow Paris climate goals

for using scientific sources and data to reveal that the world energy system has already locked in enough carbon emissions in existing power plants and transportation to blow the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. The story, written from the site of one of Europe's dirtiest coal power plants, was accompanied by Michael Sohn photos and a video edited and scripted by Stockholm videojournalist David Keyton using footage from Germany, Sweden and California. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/current...

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

US utilities find water pollution at coal ash dumps

for combing through water pollution reports posted by hundreds of utilities to reveal the scope of contamination from the dumping of coal ash from power plants into man-made ponds and landfills. http://bit.ly/2FpCHci

Best of the States

AP Analysis: EPA data says US air quality is slipping; EPA regulation could make it worse

Washington science writer Seth Borenstein knew the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was not going to notify anyone when it posted new data on the nation’s air quality for 2018, but he knew where it would be posted. He also knew that the Trump administration was poised to replace an Obama-era clean-air rule with a new regulation that was friendlier to coal-fired power plants, so he kept checking for the agency’s data.

When the data finally showed up, Borenstein teamed with New York-based Health and Science data journalist Nicky Forster to evaluate the data, put it in context and run it by scientists. Forster even pointed out errors that the EPA was forced to correct.

Their persistence made AP the first to report that the annual number of days of poor air quality in the U.S. had increased for the second year in a row, after decades of improvement. The story ran on the eve of the EPA’s announcement of its loosened regulation, undermining the rationale for the new standards with the government’s own numbers. Trump’s new rule, experts told the AP, could turn what is so far a modest backslide into a deadly trend.

For diligent reporting and sophisticated analysis to hold a federal agency accountable for its data and regulatory policy, Borenstein and Forster earn this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

International efforts to repair the planet, one tree at a time

for the third installment of the “What Can Be Saved” series, working across departments, formats and international borders to document tree-planting efforts in Peru, Brazil and West Virginia, all aimed at reversing some of the damage of global deforestation.https://bit.ly/2okaOiwhttps://apnews.com/WhatCanBeSaved

Best of the Week — First Winner

Deeply reported package explores the shift away from fossil fuels, impact on states, communities

AP reporting on energy policies in all 50 states led to an unexpected discovery: Roughly two-thirds of states in the U.S. plan to use nuclear power as an essential part of their plan to replace fossil fuels.

That resurgence in nuclear energy, despite its downsides, launched AP coverage of the latest nuclear technology and the impact on local communities, particularly those dependent on coal: a small Wyoming town replacing its coal plant with a nontraditional nuclear reactor by a Bill Gates-founded company, and a town in Colorado where coal is being phased out after generations, with no plans to replace it. “We can’t recover from that,” a former mayor told the AP.

The all-formats work showed the nation’s struggles as it shifts energy sources to stave off the worst effects of climate change. And showcasing the AP’s 50-state footprint, a localization guide enabled AP’s customers to bring the debate home for their own audiences. The package played widely at home and abroad, from local papers to national news outlets.

For superior coverage bringing to light developments in energy policy across the country and the effects on people at a local level, the team ofJennifer McDermott, Brady McCombs, Mead Gruver, Patty Nieberg, Rick Bowmer, Elaine Thompson, Manuel Valdes and Natalie Behring is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP first to identify Iran’s damaged centrifuge site

used deep sourcing, analysis of satellite photos and knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program to put AP out front in reporting that a fire had damaged Iran’s advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Natanz, one of the most-tightly guarded sites in all of the Islamic Republic after earlier acts of sabotage there.https://bit.ly/3f8RHgLhttps://bit.ly/31ROZII

Best of the States

The cost of Trump environmental rollbacks: Health woes hit minority communities hardest

With African American and Hispanic communities in the Houston region already suffering higher rates of asthma and other diseases than the nation at large, AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer decided to focus on the area for a story on ordinary Americans living through the Trump administration’s public health and environmental rollbacks. 

The administration was cutting back on rules limiting and monitoring harmful industrial pollutants, slashing enforcement and weakening an industrial-disaster rule.

Knickmeyer, a Washington-based environmental issues reporter, spent months searching out Houston residents, telling their stories along with deep reporting on the regulatory actions and their consequences.

Former EPA Director Gina McCarthy was among many retweeting the story, calling it a “must read” article.

For a rich, insightful look at the consequences of the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks on vulnerable communities, Knickmeyer wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Best of the States

Source’s tip, weeks of planning put AP at scene of massive Mississippi immigration raids

Because San Diego correspondent Elliot Spagat received a tip that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were planning massive raids on food processing plants, AP was uniquely positioned – literally – when ICE stormed seven Mississippi chicken processing plants and arrested 680 people, the largest workplace raid in a decade.

ICE’s acting Director Matthew Albence said that the investigation was so secret that even the White House didn’t know.

On the day of the raids, weeks of persistence and planning put AP way ahead of local and national media in the speed and depth of the report. Photographer Rogelio V. Solis was the only journalist on scene when about 600 agents simultaneously hit the plants, while his Jackson colleague, reporter Jeff Amy, got an exclusive interview with Albence.

Their multiday coverage received monster play, including 3 million social interactions for the first-day story alone.

For scoring scoops on a major ICE operation, Spagat, Amy and Solis are the winners of this week’s Best of the States honors.