BY MATT PEPIN
In an effort to add value to APSE membership for the media organizations in the C and D divisions, critiques will be offered in the High School Beat Writing and Short Feature categories of the annual contest this year.
With that, we’re making an appeal to contest judges working both remote and onsite during our 2025 Winter Conference in Florida to volunteer to add their feedback on the entries they read that have requested a review. This would ideally take place during the first reads, and you’d just have to transfer your notes and answer a couple of prompts on a form.
Basically you’d just clean up your notes into a coherent summary and offer honest, constructive opinions. Add suggestions. Anonymous or signed, your call.
Our goal here is to provide a little professional courtesy to our members who might be toiling without some resources, especially on the editing side. It doesn’t take long to offer genuine feedback, but we believe it will go a long way, plus it’s a great way to scout talent and get to know some new colleagues.
If we get enough judges, we’ll add a category, likely explanatory, but we’ll start with two.
More details on the process for judging these categories will be forthcoming, but if you want to sign up now, please indicate your willingness on the judge registration form, or email me at matt.pepin@globe.com or 2024 Contest Chair Paul Barrett at apsecontest@gmail.com if you’ve already registered as a judge. We’ll add your name to the list of judges who will do critiques.
More information on judging can be found here.
Your assistance will be greatly appreciated, and probably rewarded with extra drink tickets at the bar on the final night of the conference.
Contest AMA
Contest Chair Paul Barrett and President Dan Spears will hold an open question-and-answer period for editors as they begin collecting and preparing their entries for the 2024 APSE Contest.
Please join us at 2 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 19, at this Microsoft Teams link: https://bit.ly/APSE2024AMA
We look forward to hearing your questions and helping you get your contest entries done on time.
