A nationwide collaboration between AP and APFJ newsrooms transformed grocery inflation from an economic statistic into a deeply human story, using local reporting and visual storytelling to show how rising food prices are reshaping family life across America.
Reporter Dee-Ann Durbin anchored the project with national reporting based on Consumer Price Index data, then partnered with Maggie Scales of The Lexington Observer (Mass), Sandy Guatibonza of La Esquina TX, Hikari Mae Hida of Honolulu Civil Beat, and AP journalists Terry Tang, Terry Chea, Juliana Yamada and Mike Householder to create a richer, more representative national report.
Together, the team told the stories behind the statistics: a San Francisco barber struggling to feed a family of five while relying on SNAP benefits and his mother’s food bank visits; a Hawaii pastry chef substituting mainland berries for local fruit and rethinking recipes as ingredient costs soared; a Texas grandmother stretching every dollar to feed three generations by replacing beef with chicken and store brands; and a Massachusetts shopper carefully planning meals around coupons, sales and multiple grocery trips. Each narrative illustrated how inflation is reshaping everyday decisions in different corners of America.
News editor Lisa Leff, inclusion engagement editor Sundra Hominik and News Strategy Deputy Director Kim Johnson coordinated reporting across multiple newsrooms, ensuring each partner contributed distinctive local expertise while producing content tailored to its audience. Leff, who oversaw the main text and an accompanying sidebar by Durbin, conceived an approach for highlighting both the local contributions and the national context, making clear to audiences why each lens mattered. The final package combined enterprise reporting with photography and video into a visually rich digital presentation and served our local news initiative by producing a report that went beyond what the individual organizations could have created independently. Partnering with La Esquina TX extended the collaboration to Spanish-speaking audiences through a customized Spanish-language version of the story.
Audience engagement was immediate and sustained, with readers responding by sharing their own grocery-shopping strategies and financial challenges.
The judges were impressed by the depth, detail and resonance of the stories produced by the collaboration.
For a project that delivered broad geographic representation, deep community insight and expanded audience reach, AP journalists Durbin, Tang, Chea, Yamada and Householder and their collaborators Scales, Guatibonza and Hida with this week’s Best of the AP – Second Winner.
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