By Tommy Deas
APSE President
Matt L. Stephens and Kevin Lytle of the Fort Collins Coloradoan won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2016 contest in the Short Video category for Under 30,000 circulation.
The duo won for their video on a high school athlete demonstrating how to pole vault. They will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2017 APSE banquet. The banquet and awards dinner will conclude the APSE Summer Conference, which takes place June 26-29 at The Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. Click here to register for the conference.
Stephens and Lytle won over runners-up Daryn Slover of the Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine, and Kathy Jensen of the American News in Aberdeen, S.D., who tied for second.
Sports editors in the Under 30,000 category submitted 15 Short Video entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and off-site around the country, selected a top five, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 5 separately on a secret ballot. Entries were given five points for a first-place vote down to one point for a fifth-place vote. The final five were given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-5 in the same fashion. The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
The Short Video category is for videos up to 2 minutes, with entries judged, foremost, on the strength of storytelling. Visual and auditory quality are also considered.
The top 10 is listed below, with links to writers’ Twitter pages, APSE member websites and winning entries.
