AP San Francisco

Our reporter Lisa Leff won an Honorable Mention in AP's 'Beat of the Week' for being the first to report that the anti-gay marriage group that lost when the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling legalizing same-sex marriages in California had asked the high court to halt the marriages. The marriages had resumed the previous day. Leff had the news 20 minutes before anybody else, and it was used by the Sacramento Bee, Yahoo.com and others. http://www.huffingtonpost.com//proposition-8-supreme-court

John Daniszewski, a top news executive at the Associated Press with deep experience in the coverage of major world news events, has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University announced May 1. Daniszewski became AP’s vice president and senior managing editor for international news in 2009 after three decades as a reporter, editor and correspondent who has been on assignment in more than 70 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.... He is responsible for more than 500 text journalists in some 100 bureaus outside the United States producing coverage from some of the most complex and challenging news-gathering environments. Daniszewski played a central role in AP’s opening of the first Western news and photo bureau in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 2012, and the Yangon, Myanmar, bureau earlier in 2013 the first return to that country by a Western news agency after decades of strict military rule.

Last fall, AP Images began rolling out a series of updates in a targeted beta introduction to improve the online experience for customers. Designed with customer input in mind, the AP Images team has spent the last several months fine-tuning APImages.com in preparation for the launch to all customers. The next generation of APImages.com now showcases a number of features to attract new customers and offer existing ones easier access to our content while capitalizing on AP's ...broad distribution network, including: - An optimized search function designed to load faster and return more relevant & precise results - A new landing page featuring curated collections - Support for AP Images new PhotoChoice subscription plan - Infinite scrolling, larger thumbnail images and image rollovers - Icon menus indicating additional information like rights, restrictions and special instructions - Personal workplaces instead of lightboxes with tagging to categorize and share content - Fewer steps to access and download images

For those who may have missed it, our reporter Tracie Cone won an honorable mention for her NewsBreak detailing the planned service and staffing reductions at the national parks if automatic spending cuts happen. The beat, which played very well across the country, started with a source who received leaked National Park Service documents. But Tracie systematically found ways to verify the information, first from parks sources in California, then an official on-the-record confirmation from NPS headquarters in Washington. Congrats to Tracie for nice work in putting us ahead on an important national story. http://www.statesman.com//apnewsbreak-national-park/nWXKd/

Another Honorable Mention! Our Sacramento reporter Don Thompson won an honorable mention in this week's AP Beat of the Week for going deeper on Gov. Jerry Brown’s assertions that the court-appointed monitors of the federal court’s oversight of the state’s prisons had a personal financial interest in keeping this oversight from ending. Don Thompson was determined to find out just how much taxpayer money private attorneys had received. He sorted through mounds of financial data from three state agencies and came up with a number that even the governor's office didn't have: $200 million in total legal costs over 15 years. http://bit.ly/XpyKsM

In case anyone missed it, our environmental writer Jason Dearen tagged on an AP Best of States Award to his BOTW (Beat of the Week) honorable mention for his solar panels project. In addition to all the praise the story it getting for its quality, it played big around the country, especially in California. He dug into a topic of intense consumer interest, found a smart angle and pulled it off.

Beat of the Week: Honorable Mention for Jason Dearen Our environmental writer Jason Dearen won an honorable mention in this week's Beat of the Week for using public records and data analysis to calculate how much hazardous waste the booming solar panel manufacturing industry in California has produced in the past 4 1/2 years, showing for the first time the "dirty" side of this clean energy industry. Dearen compiled data over months and sent it to a dozen experts, all of whom were shocked by the amount of waste. http://www.google.com//article/ALeqM5g5oj_04tZOywMJhUWMouE.

Sacramento Bureau Wins FOI Award Sacramento reporters Juliet Williams and Hannah Dreier (now working in the AP’s Las Vegas bureau) have won a James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, for their yearlong investigation into vote-switching in the California Legislature. That project revealed that lawmakers changed or added votes after the fact more than 5,000 times last year, mostly to obscure their actual position and gain political advantage. Williams and Dreier won in the News Media category, sharing the award with The Sacramento Bee for its investigation of the state parks’ hidden money and The Press-Democrat of Santa Rosa for a public pension investigation.

Congrats to our Carson City, Nev. reporter Sandra Chereb for winning an honorable mention in AP's Beat of the Week, for reporting that the director of the state wildlife department had been forced out by Gov. Brian Sandoval just two years after the governor rehired him following his dismissal by the former governor. Chereb obtained a copy of the director's letter of resignation and then went a step further and tracked down those who had pressured Sandoval to make the move. http://bit.ly/XkRkB3

Mark your calendars for social media week, and especially February 19th: In a #MuckedUp event hosted by The Associated Press and Muck Rack and moderated by Muck Rack’s Gregory Galant, the social media editor and a video assignment manager from AP will offer insight on the news cooperative’s approach to social and digital newsgathering standardshttp://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/events/?id=51852#.UPhDB-RlGf4

Reminder: Deadline to apply for the AP-Google Journalism and Technology Scholarship for 2013-2014 academic year is February 8! http://journalists.org/next-gen/ap-google-scholarship/

Internships 2013. http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH09/ats/careers/requisition.jsp

Check out AP Photos of the Year 2012: http://www.apimages.com/Search.aspx