BY TODD M. ADAMS, APSE FIRST VICE PRESIDENT
Kent Babb of The Washington Post won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors’ 2018 contest in feature writing for the A Division.
Babb will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2019 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Omni CNN Center in Atlanta on June 19.
Babb edged runner-up Sarah Spain from ESPN.com. Jeff Seidel from the Detroit Free Press placed third.
Sports
editors in the A Division submitted 130 feature entries. The contest
is open to APSE members. Click
here to join.
Contest chair Todd M. Adams and fellow APSE officers John Bednarowski, Lisa Wilson and Dan Spears prepared entries. In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Orlando, Fla., and off-site around the country, selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10 separately on a secret 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 writers will receive frameable certificates.
The feature story judges evaluated the entries on level of human interest, reader interest, quality of writing and thoroughness of reporting. The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries:
1. Kent Babb, The Washington Post,
70 points, 3 first-place votes
2. Sarah Spain,
ESPN.com, 62 points, 2 first-place votes
3. Jeff Seidel, Detroit
Free Press, 51 points
4. Kate Hairopoulos,
The Dallas Morning News, 47 points, 2 first-place votes
5. Mirin Fader,
Bleacher Report, 45 points, 1 first-place vote
6. Ryan Kartje,
Southern California News Group, 42 points
7. Tim Graham, The
Athletic, 38 points
8. Stephen J. Nesbitt,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 37 points
9. Erik Brady, USA
Today Sports, 34 points
10. Ben Cohen, The Wall
Street Journal, 19 points
