Mike Kessler and Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN.com won first place in The Associated Press Sports Editors 2019 contest in Investigative.
Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic finished second. Ken Jacoby of USA Today Sports took third.
Kessler and Fainaru-Wada will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2020 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis on June 27.
Sports editors in all four divisions submitted 27 Investigative entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Lisa Wilson and fellow APSE officers Todd M. Adams, Gary Potosky and Dan Spears prepared the entries.
In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in St. Petersburg, Fla., and off-site around the country, selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10 on a separate ballot. Entries were given 10 points for a first-place vote, nine points for second and so on down to one point for a 10th-place vote. The final 10 were given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-10 in the same fashion.
The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
The winner in each category will receive a plaque at the summer conference. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive certificates.
The investigative judges considered an entry’s enterprise, initiative, documentation, resourcefulness and original reporting in uncovering newsworthy and significant facts and developments that otherwise might not have been reported.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries.
1. Mike Kessler and Mark Fainaru-Wada, ESPN.com, 63 points, one first-place vote
2. Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich, The Athletic 1 | 2 | 3 | 4, 61 points, three first-place votes
3. Kenny Jacoby, USA Today Sports 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7, 57 points, three first-place votes
4. John Simerman, The Advocate/The Times-Picayune, 47 points
5. Scott M. Reid, Southern California News Group 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 , 45 points
6. Joe Drape, The New York Times 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 35 points
7. Nathan Fenno, Los Angeles Times 1 | 2 | 3, 25 points
8. Pete Thamel, Dan Wetzel, Pat Forde, Yahoo Sports 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9, 22 points
9. Will Hobson, Terri Thompson, Christian Red, The Washington Post 1 | 2, 18 points
10. Henry Cordes, Omaha World-Herald 1 | 2 | 3, 12 points
