By Jeff Rosen
APSE First Vice President
Chuck Culpepper of the Washington Post tied a seven-person team from USA Today for first-place Project Reporting in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2016 contest’s Over-175,000 circulation category.
Culpepper’s entry, in six parts, dealt with the evolution of women’s sports in Middle Eastern culture. The USA Today entry, presented in nine, examined the finances of college sports.
Sports editors submitted a total of 50 entries in the Project Writing category this year. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Jeff Rosen and fellow APSE officers Tommy Deas, John Bednarowski and Robert Gagliardi numbered each entry, assuring they had been stripped of headlines, graphics, bylines and any other element that would identify the writer or news organization.
In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and off-site around the country selected a top 10 in this category, 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 then given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-10 in the same fashion. The winner and final rankings were determined by tallying the two sets of ballots.
The winners in each category will receive a plaque at the 2017 APSE Summer Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans June 26-29. The second- through 10th-place entrants will receive frameable certificates. (Click here to register for the conference.)
Judges in the Project Writing category considered articles or collections of articles that shed new light on personalities and issues in the news, including trends and original ideas. Entries were limited to 10 parts apiece, though the judges could consider additional material at their discretion.
Here is the top 10, with links to writers’ Twitter pages (where applicable), APSE member websites and winning entries.
4- Jeré Longman, New York Times, 37 points, one first-place vote
