The duo of Clark Wade and Zak Keefer of the Indianapolis Star won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2015 contest in Long Video for the 75-175,000 circulation category.
Wade and Keefer won for their video, “Butler’s Run to the 2010 Final Four,” where they retold the story of the run Butler made in the 2010 NCAA Tournament and how the Bulldogs were inches away from making history. Wade and Keefer will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2016 APSE banquet. The banquet and awards dinner concludes the APSE Conference June 22-25 at The Omni in Charlotte, N.C.
Wade and Keefer collected five of the six first-place votes and finished with 17 points. Finishing second was the team of John Woike, Mark Mirko, Patrick Raycraft, Peter Casolino, Brad Horrigan and Rich Messina of the Hartford Courant, who finished with 10 points. They edged out Samuel M. Simpkins of the The Tennessean who had nine points.
Sports editors in the 75-175,000 category submitted 13 long video entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Tommy Deas 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 late February and early March, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference at Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., selected a top 3, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 3 separately on a secret ballot. Entries were given 3 points for a first-place vote, 2 points for second and 1 point for third place. The final 3 were given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-3 in the same fashion. The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
This was the first year video was separated from other multimedia. There was a category for video less than 2 minutes and another for video more than 2 minutes. Entries were judged on strength of storytelling as well as visual and auditory quality. Each news organization was limited to one entry.
The top three is listed below with links to writers’ Twitter pages, APSE member websites and winning entries:
1. Clark Wade and Zak Keefer, Indianapolis Star, 5 first-place votes, 17 points
Butler’s run at the 2010 Final Four
2. John Woike, Mark Mirko, Patrick Raycraft, Peter Casolino, Brad Horrigan and Rich Messina, Hartford Courant, 10 points
Game Time: An Inside Look at High School Football
3. Samuel M. Simpkins, The Tennessean, 1 first-place vote, 9 points
