By Julie Jag | The Salt Lake Tribune
At so many forks in the road, as he navigated his path as a professional and a person, Erik Hall found support from the Associated Press Sports Editors organization. Now, as its newly elected second vice president, Hall will be able to help lead APSE into its own successful future.
Since his days working at the the Daily Illini student newspaper, Hall recognized APSE contest winners as being at the top of their craft. Not until he attended his first summer conference in Chicago in 2012 as a news and sports copy editor for the Charleston (Ill.) Times Courier, however, did he understand the true caliber of its members.
“I met so many people that have really impacted my career,” said Hall, the managing editor of The Telegraph in Alton, Ill. He name-dropped Phil Kaplan, Todd Adams and Nick Mathews, among others. “… I just really fell in love with it and made connections with people and basically have not stopped going.”
Hall attended the Detroit summer conference in 2013 and then the winter conference and judging in Indianapolis in 2014. Over the ensuing decade, he has attended at least one of the two conferences per year, and sometimes both.
In addition to supporting him in his professional life, Hall found much-appreciated encouragement from APSE members in his personal life. He attended his first Pride parade while in Chicago for that year’s summer conference. The next year, the opening day of the Detroit conference fell on the day the Supreme Court was expected to hand down its decision on the legality of gay marriage. Hall recalls seeing that Mathews, then the editor of the Houston Chronicle, had changed his profile picture to one showing support of gay marriage. Hall also made his first public post about his sexuality that day, and when he arrived for the conference, Jason Wolf congratulated him on coming out.
“I remember feeling like, ‘Oh, it might be okay to be out in this industry,’” Hall recalled. “Because that was something I wasn’t sure about, to be honest.”
In 2015, Hall became an APSE Diversity Fellow. He has run the APSE Facebook account for the past nine years and was the Southeast Region chair and vice chair from 2019-2023. From 2020-22 he ran the student contest, an experience he’ll draw from as he heads up the 2026 professional contest (his main emphasis will be bringing in more judges, he said). Then, two years ago, he joined APSE Foundation as a board member and its secretary.
Lisa Wilson, the APSE Foundation executive director, said Hall’s presence on the board will be missed. Hall and Larry Graham were the ones who encouraged her to run for Second VP in 2018, she said. She served as the organization’s president in 2020-21.
“He’s somebody who has, from the moment he came into APSE, been dedicated,” Wilson said. “He always shows up, and he always cares about the organization.”
As he takes an even greater leadership role on his way to becoming president in 2027-28, Hall said he wants the APSE camaraderie to envelop even more sports editors. The first step, he said, is giving editors and writers more avenues to get involved, especially if they can’t make the conferences. He also wants to ensure the organization is financially sound.
Among his most pressing priorities, though, is honoring the editors that have shaped both the profession and the people in it. The tribute will be similar to the Red Smith Award, he said, except that it will exclusively honor editors.
“I want to make sure that gets off the ground,” he said, “… because we need to create something that recognizes the legacy of sports editors in this country.”
Hall will take office on the last day of the 2025 summer conference, which will take place June 26-28 in Minneapolis.
