AP offers exclusive footage and story from Cissy Houston’s memorial

Written by: Mark Kennedy, Guido Neira, Gary Hamilton, Charles Sykes, Jonathan Landrum Jr. and Hillel Italy

The AP was the sole outlet for Cissy Houston’s memorial due to its longstanding relationship with a representative of the Houston family, advance coverage of the memorial for notable celebrities including Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin, and wide distribution of the AP’s obituary of the gospel legend.

AP worked closely with the representative to explain how we would cover the event; Jonathan Landrum, Hillel Italie, Brooke Lefferts, Ali Kaufman and Anthony McCartney outlined our coverage. My previous experience covering Whitney Houston’s memorial at the same church was helpful. The AP’s strong position was demonstrated when the representative tasked Landrum with breaking the news of Cissy Houston’s death; This story received more than 125,000 page views and was widely distributed. The obituary story was written by Landrum and Hillel Italie. Italie took advantage of advance notice of the commemorations to persuade the representative to allow him to attend the ceremony. A last-minute emergency led to Mark Kennedy stepping in to handle the text story.

While Hamilton and Neira handled the video service, Ali Kaufman teamed up with Invision contributor Charles Sykes to offer photos from inside and outside the service.

The YouTube video of the event has been viewed more than 51,000 times; the story received over 31,000 page views and was among the top 100 stories the week it was published.

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