By John Bednarowski
APSE Third Vice President
Marietta Daily Journal
President Mike Sherman has a vision of adding at least 50 new members to APSE –one from every state.
Lofty goal? Perhaps. But one worth pursuing.
As the number of APSE members has contracted over the last few years, it has become obvious which have become the main contributors. I think we have reached our core.
This is why I am charging our members of the smallest circulation category – the single largest group within the organization – to help our president reach his goals.
Since the summer convention, I have held conversations with many of our small paper editors – including Second Vice President Tommy Deas, Justin Pelletier, Dana Sulonen, Jim Siemas and others – who have agreed to help take the lead on this project. We will be reaching out to others in the group and asking for your help in contacting non-member organizations, with the hopes of finding those editors and writers that want to get involved in keeping APSE a stronghold of sports journalism.
While talking with many of you, the conversation eventually turned to our contest and your concerns. Ultimately, the thing most small papers identified as something we want in the contest is the return of the game story category.
The game story for smaller publications is still something that we budget our sections around – small colleges, high school football Friday nights, basketball tournaments and the like. These stories to us are one’s you can’t readily find in most papers or national websites.
With that, I will be asking First Vice President Mary Byrne to consider bringing that back for the small publications, and possibly shuffling around a couple other things as well.
And, speaking of the high school football Friday nights. Many of our news organizations have recently completed their preseason previews. Often, this is the biggest project we construct each year – regardless of circulation size. I feel it is important to share them with as many of us as possible.
That is why I am reinstituting the football section exchange program that former APSE Toby Carrig headed when I joined the organization. Each paper interested in participating will send me 15-20 issues of their football preview issue. Once I have them all, I will separate and distribute the issues so everyone gets 15 or 20 in return to study and borrow/outright steal ideas from to make your own issue better in the future.
Check the APSE website for a separate article specifically about this with further directions.
If you have any questions, comments or ideas, please share them with me. I can be reached at johnbednarowski@gmail.com, or at sportseditor@mdjonline.com.
I hope to hear from you soon.
