All-format coverage of historic wildfires in France and Spain reflects AP teamwork at its best

A dozens-strong regional team overcame logistical challenges and braved hazardous conditions to provide industry-leading coverage of wildfires that raged across France and Spain.

Indefatigable frontline work in France by videojournalists Mark Carlson and Alex Turnbull, followed by Nico Garriga, and astounding photography by Emma Da Silva, Baz Ratner and Caroline Blumberg, was delivered with incredible speed and volume to clients by a legion of producers and editors. Senior Producer Jeffrey Schaeffer led the production team of Masha Macpherson, Catherine Gaschka and Kostya Manenkov who packaged hours of live video. Schaeffer, coordinating with AP’s safety and security team, also led the essential work of ensuring the frontline team was safe. Carlson delivered a daily torrent of 8+ hours of live coverage and self-shot Reporter Dispatches of himself amid the smoke, flames and firefighting. Photo editors Virginia Mayo, Laurent Cipriani, Michel Euler, Christophe Ena and Armando Franca enabled frontline photographers to dedicate themselves to capturing compelling images of the inferno and the thousands combatting it. The writing and reporting team of Eva van Dam in Bordeaux, Thomas Adamson, Samuel Petrequin, and Jamey Keaten, led by John Leicester, worked furiously to make sense of what the images showed. Graphic artist Will Jarrett tracked the blazes’ spread using satellite data. The human toll was laid bare in character-driven stories on some of the 220,000 evacuees, both with video and photos by Van Dam. Keaten also secured a message actor George Clooney sent when he was forced to evacuate that was AP’s best performing YouTube video on that day.

Explanatory journalism from Adamson, revealing how the blaze made its own weather with unprecedented firestorms, and Petrequin, on why man-made forests are so fire-prone, was complemented with stories by Seth Borenstein on the link to climate change. Reporters Joe Wilson, Justin Spike and Teresa Medrano also contributed important sidebars.

In Spain, cameraman/producer Iain Sullivan and videojournalist Alicia Leon overcame significant restrictions on the ground, struggling to reach positions to go live while speaking with evacuees. Manuel Fernandez pulled double duty for photos and video delivering powerful frontline footage of firefighters battling the blaze, along with drone images that showed the scale of the destruction.

Judges praised the fast, compelling, all formats coverage of the wildfires, delivered amid difficult and dangerous conditions.

AP’s teams in France and Spain win this week’s Best of the AP – First Winner.