David Woods of the IndyStar won first place in the 2022 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division B Beat Writing category for his coverage of track and field.
APSE contest winners will be honored at the 2023 APSE Summer Conference banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on July 12. Click here to register for the conference, which begins on July 9 and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of APSE.
Sam McKewon of the Omaha World-Herald was second for his Nebraska football coverage, and David Cloninger of The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.) was third for his University of South Carolina coverage.
Woods will receive a plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.
Sports editors in Division B submitted 56 Beat Writing entries.
Contest chair Naila-Jean Meyers and fellow APSE officers Jorge Rojas, Dan Spears and Ed Reed prepared the entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest results: Sections, digital, video | Writing and photography
In February, judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and remote judges around the country selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10. 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.
Beat writing is a collection of five pieces by a single author that shows authoritative, newsy and innovative coverage of a beat. Each writer was required to submit one breaking news story, one event or game coverage story and one enterprise story. The final two pieces were left to the writer’s discretion and could include multimedia presentations.
The top 10 is listed below with voting results and links to the winning entries.
- David Woods, Indy Star: track and field 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 53 points (3 first-place votes)
- Sam McKewon, Omaha World-Herald: Nebraska football 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 43 points (1 first-place vote)
- David Cloninger, The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.): University of South Carolina 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 , 35 points (1 first-place vote)
- Dave Matter, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, University of Missouri 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 32 points
- Jesse Newell, The Kansas City Star: University of Kansas 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 31 points
- Steve Wiseman, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), Duke University 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 30 points
- Mike Wilson, Knoxville News Sentinel: University of Tennessee 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 28 points
- Chris Tomasson, St. Paul Pioneer Press: Minnesota Vikings 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 27 points
- C.L. Brown, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.): University of North Carolina 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 26 points
- Kevin Reynolds, The Salt Lake Tribune: BYU football 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5, 25 points
