Doubletree Suites, Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023
President Jorge Rojas calls the meeting to order at 4:06 p.m. and introduces First Vice-President Naila-Jean Meyers, Second Vice-President Dan Spears, Third Vice-President Ed Reed, Conference Coordinator Glen Crevier and Executive Director Bill Eichenberger.
Past presidents
- Gary Potosky, Philadelphia Inquirer (2021-22)
- Lisa Wilson, The Athletic (2020-21)
- Glen Crevier, then The Star Tribune of Minneapolis (2005-06)
- John Bednarowski, Marietta Daily Journal (2018-19)
- Tommy Deas, then Tuscaloosa News (2016-17)
- Phil Kaplan, Knoxville News-Sentinel (2010-11)
- Lynn Hoppes, Orlando Sentinel (2008-09)
- Jim Jenks, then Philadelphia Inquirer (2006-07)
- Bill Eichenberger, then NewsDay (2003-04)
Past presidents, please make time to do a video with Erik Hall if you haven’t already.
Region representatives
Northeast: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. (Jim Pignatiello)
Atlantic Coast: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, West Virginia (Justin Pelletier)
Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virgin Islands (Tommy Deas)
Great Lakes: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin. (Naila Myers)
Great Plains: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma (Erik Hall).
Southwest: New Mexico, Texas. (Jeff Perkins)
Northwest: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming. (Paul Barrett)
West: Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah. (Bill Eichenberger)
Representing the Associated Press: Barry Bedlan, Oscar Dixon
Jorge: We’ve got a long list of items to get through before we get to Naila talks about contest details and the judging groups, so you might want to take notes, be judicious in what questions to raise and maybe we can cover a couple of hot topics at the end of all the conference reports before turning it over to Naila. Or some questions and concerns might be able to wait until the closing meeting. But here we go …
Finances and budget update (Bill Eichenberger)
$47,000 in our accounts. Membership dues end up being $6,000 under budget through the first seven months of the financial year. The rest of our other budget items are on track.
Our total membership numbers have grown by 50 from 2022, but that growth is through individuals. Student membership dues go to local chapters, not the national organization. NC A&T is our biggest chapter at 44 members.
APSE conference update (Glen Crevier)
Did you get breakfast vouchers? Check in with Glen if you didn’t. Opening reception tonight by the pool. Another reception Tuesday night. Hospitality room will be in the Cypress Room by the pool.
Las Vegas conference at the Flamingo are July 9-12. We have been told that the rooms have been renovated since we were there in 2021. Awards dinner will be on final night (Wednesday).
Naila: We are still seeking ideas for conference workshops and sessions. See us with your suggestions.
Remarks from Jorge
We’re at a bit of a crossroads with judging, and with hotel headquarters in general. Our surveys show that members prefer a conference hotel and they were strongly supportive of in-person judging because of what everyone gets out of it – such as meeting people, learning, exchanging ideas, networking, even commiserating – but the attendance doesn’t show it, and we’re getting stuck with hotel bills because not enough people are showing up and a percentage of folks aren’t staying at the conference hotel. The officers have talked about it, and it seems like the direction we might be heading in is for the six officers to pick a spot on the map (hey, let’s all meet in Nashville this year) and perhaps the diversity fellows and then anyone else who wants to attend (such as you fine folks) can show up at a contest clearinghouse headquarter. The rest of judging would be done remotely, and perhaps could be replaced on occasion with a regional event or “barnstorming” gatherings around major sporting events like the Super Bowl of College Football Playoff title game. Is the lack of attendance apathy? Are people willing but not able? Are folks not getting the return on investment they once did? Whatever the case, we need to make adjustments, at the very least on the hotel front. I’m happy to say that we are doing pretty well on several fronts, including APSE finances. Involvement seems to be our biggest issue. And it’s not you, who are the same faithful few.
On to the Committee Reports …
Tommy Deas: Thai Night committee report. Monday night, 7:30 at Coco Thai. We will need to Uber to that. Meet in the lobby at 7 to go over.
Justin: Mini golf will be at the course next to Coco Thai following dinner.
Revenue (Deas)
We’re off to a good start on sponsorships for the 2023 Summer Conference in Las Vegas. The Athletic has committed to a gold-level sponsorship to sponsor a career development workshop. We have commitments from The Associated Press and the Las Vegas Review-Journal totaling $13,500, which puts us well ahead of where we were at this point last year. We have made a pitch to PBR – Professional Bull Riding – which is currently before their board and they have shown keen interest. We have also begun outreach to many of our other past sponsors, including MLS, MLB, NASCAR, the National Football Foundation and others and I’m optimistic that we can have our best sponsorship year that we’ve had in the last several years, since pre-COVID.
APSE Foundation (Michael Anastasi)
Class XI of the APSE Diversity in Leadership Fellowship program is underway. We have six Fellows in our 11th class and, assuming all graduate in July, the total number of Fellows who will have successfully gone through the program will be 54.
The APSE Foundation, which is legally distinct from APSE, has its own board of directors. Its primary mission is to support the Fellowship program. Michael Anastasi is president and continues to direct the program, working closely with Jorge Rojas who also has been involved since the fellowship’s inception.
Two members of the Board, Graham Watson-Ringo and Larry Graham recently resigned due to other professional commitments. They have been replaced by Gary Estwick and a person to be determined.
In addition, Don Shelton is stepping back as executive director this summer due to his teaching responsibilities but will remain a member of the board. Lisa Wilson is becoming the new executive director. This summer Jorge Rojas will also join the board as his APSE term ends.
Jenni Carlson, a graduate, continues to serve on the board as secretary and is joined by board member Gary Potosky. Tommy Deas works with the board in an advisory, non-voting capacity.
The Foundation has been following a strategic plan of working to increase each cohort to 8 Fellows. This year we increased from five to six. Financially, the strategic plan calls for the Foundation to have enough money to fund the present class plus the next three classes on an ongoing basis.
Fund-raising consequently has been a major focus of the board and we have had some success with contributions coming from several leagues, the Gannett Foundation and a number of individuals, including generous donations from APSE members. Our balance sheet has doubled over the past year and we are closing in on achieving the goal, which will be an accomplishment. We are in advanced discussions with the Knight Foundation and are optimistic that we’ll receive some funding from them which should get us where we want to be or pretty darn close.
Of course, fund-raising must continue in order to keep up with current expenses and keep us in compliance with the strategic plan.
While the primary mission of the Foundation is to support the diversity fellowship, it can also serve as a fund-raising receptacle for APSE. In addition, we have had some discussions about supporting scholarships through additional fund-raising once we are able to achieve the strategic goal. We are presently serving as the conduit for funds in support of the Garry D. Howard Scholarship.
Fellows from Class XI are in attendance at judging, will participate in region meetings where possible and receive other assignments (such as newsletter or writers group liaison), and will be in Las Vegas in July for their crowning moment. Class XII will be chosen in September 2023.
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The annual Diversity Weekend took place in Nashville Dec. 9-11 and was a rousing success. It was quite a full schedule, which included discussions on strategy and leadership, a visit to the Nashville Public Library’s Civil Rights & Votes for Women wings, a Predators game, a Titans game, an art show, and of course, the 15-minute speeches. For those attending judging, please welcome (and please stand up when I call your name):
- Meredith Perri, MassLive / The Republican
- Zach Powell, Lock Haven Express
- Damon Sayles, The Athletic
- Alex Vejar, Salt Lake Tribune
- Kelly Ward, Seattle Times
- Patrick Bernadeau, Pensacola News Journal (unable to attend in person because of illness … but still judging!)
Diversity (A. Sherrod Blakely)
Thanks to the selection committee, it was a hard choice. This group, though, is what we are trying to be.
The Diversity Pledge continues to be an important tool for us in our efforts to create a more diverse workforce at all levels of sports journalism. We’ll continue to create and cultivate those conversations and engagement opportunities with news organizations to make diversity a priority in the hiring process throughout 2023 and beyond.
As we look ahead to the national conference, we will continue to pursue programming that meets the diverse needs of our membership along with addressing issues of importance such as the increased news deserts throughout the country and the impact this has on marginalized communities; specifically looking at different, innovative ways to address the need that these communities have when it comes to the news being addressed in their communities. I will be looking for members to brainstorm and come up with ideas on a potential session or sessions we can have at the national convention.
Finally, and we can’t talk about it right now, I want us to look at news deserts … not just that they exist, but how we can fill them with diverse journalists?
Membership Committee (Jason Murray)
- Regions (Michael Kates/Gary Potosky): Region Committee Report
Jason: We want to create a calendar of all of our meetings. But there haven’t been a lot of meetings. Erik – Southeast is April 17 in Birmingham. We just found out.
Gary Potosky: Please find Jason or I this week if you want to discuss regions.
The lifeblood of APSE Regions is meetings and local collaboration. But we’ve heard loud and clear from most of the Regions that they simply cannot promise to meet in person, and for nearly all, it’s impossible.
We went from 9 Regions to 8 because the Mid-Atlantic became non-participatory. That was only the beginning.
We emphasized to every Region last spring and summer the importance of holding an in-person meeting, or at least a meeting on Zoom, before the end of 2022. That did not happen in a few of the Regions. And there’s been little to no discussion of new Region meetings, even by Zoom, for 2023 to this date.
It’s the feeling of Regions Committee leadership – Mike Kates, Gary Potosky and Membership Committee chair Jason Murray – that in time for this year’s summer conference, APSE needs a new Region structure that will acknowledge the increasing difficulty in finding 16 editors to hold these positions at one time, the geographical obstacles to in-person meetings, but also will acknowledge the need to restore annual meetings that benefit APSE members.
We welcome any and all suggestions, ideas, solutions, criticisms, and complaints because if our members don’t participate in Regions, and we don’t have regularly scheduled Region meetings, at least one per year per Region whose content is of value to its members and worth the time it takes away from their daily jobs, then the purpose of even having Regions any longer must come into question.
If we wait past this summer and outgoing region chairs come out, we’re delayed another year. We don’t want another year like last year, where we didn’t even have Zoom meetings in some places. This is important for smaller organizations that need answers. We hope to have a plan in place in couple months that will go to the executive committee and would go into place after that summer conference.
Jorge: Yes, it’s been discussed that we go down to as few as 4 regions, also including a coordinator and rotating around. We’ve also talked about how to work closer with student chapters. Or it might completely be different.
- Newsletter/President videos (Jorge Rojas/Erik Hall): We are looking for a volunteer or two to work with Jake Adams and Lindsey Smith in the writing/reporting/planning of lead stories for the newsletter, which went on hiatus over the holidays as Jake assumed interim SE responsibilities in Louisville. We would like to get them going again, perhaps by March 1, and it should be a not-too-heavy lift (and good practice) to arrange an interview or Q&A with someone on an interesting or trendy topic. We are also looking for volunteers to help Erik Hall with the APSE presidents/legends videos interviews that he has been doing. I have loved each and every one of them so far. Thanks a lot Erik for doing those. Great job!
- Grassroots (Ed Reed): This year we saw a bump in the number of D Division entries for the contest from 39 to 48, which is good to see. But there were also 22 registered members that did not enter so we will need to work on those properties to be more involved. In the coming year, with the ever evolving landscape in our newsrooms, we need to get a better handle on who is out there working for smaller papers. More sports sections are being combined with multiple properties under one editor or properties eliminating the sports editor position entirely. Once we identify potential members we can work on recruiting them into the organization by deciphering what APSE can do to be of assistance and entice them to join.
Commissioners (Hank Winnicki)
Chair Hank Winnicki has begun contacting the various league offices, and we are hoping to meet again this year in New York sometime in April. Thanks to Hank and Gary Potosky’s efforts, we were able to pull off having meetings last year for the first time after a two-year pandemic pause.
Attendance was understandably spotty for some sessions last May as the meetings came together quickly and many people were still averse to travel, but we are expecting a better turnout this year. Attendance at these meetings is vital to what we do. We covered a lot of important access issues last year with Covid-19 restrictions lifting, and it’s essential that we get in front of these commissioners to discuss any issues (including locker room access and other challenges).
NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman was a strong addition last year, and Hank says he’d like to build off that by inviting some different leagues to join. He is open to suggestions.
Legal affairs and ethics (Malcolm Moran)
No report, other than to say all the pro sports leagues are providing locker room access. We prevailed in a small skirmish with the California Horse Racing Board over its attempt to impose harsh credentialing restrictions for backstretch access.
Jorge: The Pac 12 and Big Ten are looking at closing locker rooms for the conference tournament championships. We are speaking with them currently, but unsure on how this will play out.
Olympics (Roxanna Scott)
A group from APSE met with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee on Feb. 14 in Chicago to help decide the credential allocation for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. This was the first time APSE met with USOPC since before the pandemic.
According to Jon Mason of the USOPC, 217 organizations applied and demand far exceeded supply, which historically has been the case for Summer Olympics in non-pandemic years.
Over the course of several hours, our APSE committee worked with the USOPC to allocate more than 300 media credentials to more than 120 news outlets. There were several sites that were eliminated from consideration, due to size of audience or the lack of current news content on their sites.
The next step in the process is that editors should receive confirmation from the USOPC if you have been awarded credentials. This fall the USOPC will start collecting names, passport numbers and personal information for the credentials.
If you didn’t receive a credential and want to get on a waitlist, you should reach out to Jon Mason directly.
Red Smith (Rachel Crader)
The nomination process just closed as we prepare to select the next APSE Red Smith Award winner. Congratulations again to 2022 honoree Leon Carter.
The Red Smith Award is awarded annually to a person who has made “major contributions to sports journalism” and is considered the highest honor in sports journalism. Participation in this process is important and appreciated.
Voting is expected open this week. Eligible to vote are Red Smith Award winners, APSE past presidents, APSE national officers, 10-year APSE members and alumni members who belonged to APSE for at least 15 years.
The five people who finished behind Leon in last year’s voting automatically are nominated for this year’s award. They are Bill Plaschke, Tom Boswell, Mark Whicker, Dan Shaughnessy and Bill Lyon.
Biographical information will be included in that ballot for both the automatic nominees and new nominees. Please contact Rachel at rcrader@lee.net if you have any questions.
Tommy Deas: I did not get any notification about this and have somebody to nominate. Jorge will get together with Tommy for that information.
TIDES report (Jorge Rojas)
It will start this week. We have been in communication with Dr. Richard Lapchick and the folks at UCF about TIDES (The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports) conducting another racial and gender report card for APSE. We are expecting students with surveys to be on this week and hope to have surveys distributed to remote judges and sports editors. This is an important initiative for APSE, especially coming off the pandemic, and participation from all of our members is key. Please take the time to respond accurately to the surveys and please do not feel discouraged or embarrassed if your diversity staffing numbers are not where you want them to be. No one will be singled out regarding any negative results and only positives would be highlighted in the public report, which is expected to be released in September and will keep APSE current on its two-year schedule. We appreciate your making the effort to respond.
Erik Hall: Can we make sure that LGBTQ inclusion is part of the questions? Iliana Limon-Romero said they have been open to any questions we want to include. Jorge will bring this up when he talks to the team from UCF.
Career advancement (Lisa Wilson)
Mentorship:
The APSE mentorship pairings for 2023:
–Mentor: Roxanna Scott (USA TODAY). Mentee: Alexis Cubit (Louisville Courier-Journal)
–Mentor: Tyler Batiste (The Athletic). Mentee: Myer Turner (St. Augustine Record)
–Mentor: Naila-Jean Meyers (Star Tribune). Mentee: Michael Niziolek (Cleveland.com)
–Mentor: Jim Pignatiello (MassLive/The Republican). Mentee: Nick Kelly (Tuscaloosa News)
–Mentor: John Murphy (Century Newspapers). Mentee: Jeff Perkins (San Antonio Express-News)
If anybody is interested in being paired with a mentor, or if you want to be a mentor, please see Lisa Wilson before the closing meeting or email lisabellwilson46@gmail.com
Student chapters:
–March 8 session: Q&A with Kalyn Kahler of The Athletic, who went from assistant to Peter King to national NFL writer, talking about unconventional paths. Also will detail how to enter the APSE student contest and how to apply for APSE scholarships. Scholarship deadline is just before Memorial Day, but has been extended in previous years.
Student contest (Iliana Limon Romero)
Iliana Limón Romero is taking over supervising the student contest after Erik Hall’s successful run. She is looking for help encouraging students to enter the contest ahead of the Saturday, April 8, deadline. After professional contest judging wraps up, we’ll have a story to share on social media and a flyer available to distribute with contest details. Iliana also needs judges, it would help a ton to have a few more volunteers. You will have about four weeks to evaluate candidates. This supports young people working trying to break into the industry and provides judges a nice chance to evaluate top young prospects who could be future interns or full-time hires. Please see Iliana or email her at Iliana.limonromero@latimes.com.
Writer liaisons manager (Jorge Rojas w/input from Gerry Ahern)
Let’s try to solve this today or over the next couple of days. We’re looking for a volunteer to find volunteers and assign them to the different writers groups. It’s basically a liaison to each of the writers groups – pro football, pro basketball, BBWA, pro hockey, college football, college basketball and soccer. We have had this before but it fell by the wayside. Would really help in dealing with issues in a unified fashion with APSE and writers working together from the start rather than being reactive when fires break out. The liaisons could attend writers group meetings or at the very least check in with them on a monthly basis. This volunteer “manager” could compile updates from the liaisons and present a summary at APSE opening meetings.
Upcoming conventions (Iliana Limon Romero, Tommy Deas/Sherrod Blakely, Naila Meyers, Erik Hall)
We had representation in 2022 at all major journalism conventions. We hope to do that again in 2023.
NAHJ (Iliana): Unfortunately, the National Association for Hispanic Journalists convention falls right after this year’s APSE convention. While some of us can do both, we know there’s a good chance you’ll miss the Vegas-Miami doubleheader. That being said, our relatively young reboot of the NAHJ Sports Task Force is making progress. If you’d like to receive updates about non-convention events, share job and internship postings or serve as a mentor, please email nahjdeportes@gmail.com, email Iliana or find her during judging.
AWSM (Iliana): The Association for Women in Sports Media is hosting its annual convention from April 13-16 in Charlotte. AWSM has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and economic downturn. If you can’t join us for the convention, we’re asking APSE members to consider joining the organization or sponsoring others for membership. This is an all-volunteer organization with no full-time employees that is shifting toward grant applications as our donors cut their budgets. We support student and professional members at all level of sports media, developing top talent that has thrived in your newsrooms. You can visit awsmonline.org for registration or donation opportunities or find Iliana for more information.
NABJ (Sherrod): The National Association of Black Journalists convention is scheduled for Birmingham, Alabama, Aug. 2-6. Hotels are filling up quickly. This year’s theme is Revolution to Evolution and key to programming and engagement. I am on the committee for sessions, sports and social justice will hopefully be on the lineup. Our sports task force will have programming, our scholarship jam. New this year: At least 2 students will have their convention fully paid for and are looking at providing registration fees to sports task force members. Nabjonline.org or find Sherrod this week with questions.
AAJA (Naila): The Asian-American Journalists Association convention is set for July 19-22, 2023 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC. The week after APSE! Lots of great opportunities for meeting young journalists and create long connections. Go to aaja.org or find Naila if you have questions.
NLGJA (Erik): Philadelphia Sept. 7-10 the Loew’s Hotel. We have great panels that are being determined, but also an opportunity at the career expo to tell people about your organization. Go to nlgja.org or speak with Erik Hall this week if you have questions.
Surveys (Jorge Rojas)
In our second member survey, we asked you about what you want out of APSE conferences. We are heartened by the fact that our members continue to want to meet in-person periodically during the year. Only 30 members responded to the survey on conferences, making it difficult to draw broad conclusions from the answers. But according to Naila’s analysis of those responses, 33 percent of respondents said time off/schedule was the most important factor in deciding to attend an APSE conference, while 23 percent said money/cost was the most important factor and 16.7 percent said the networking opportunity was the most important.
We continue to seek feedback from members about how to make conference attendance more affordable and more appealing for your careers. A majority of respondents (69 percent) preferred a summer conference format that only required three nights at a hotel, while 87 percent of respondents liked the idea of universities hosting the summer conference. We got many good suggestions for future host cities, and respondents showed a clear preference for conference programming that included more workshops about tools of the trade and how to execute great journalism.
If you have not completed the survey on conferences, you still can! Here’s the link to that
There will be another survey coming in the spring that could include questions about dues structure, technology and some miscellaneous topics.
So please complete your TIDES report survey and APSE surveys. We appreciate it.
Website/social (Dan Spears)
Thanks again to Erik Hall and Phil Kaplan for their work getting items onto Twitter and Facebook and all the minutiae that comes with that.
Our website is still hosted on GoDaddy, but our conversion to Pressable is currently underway. It’s been a pretty exhaustive process, and Andy Rhinehart from PolkSports.com has been doing all the heavy lifting and I’ve been helping as much as I can with my limited knowledge base inside WordPress.
As many former officers know, our website has been held together with chewing gum and string for a while. From Andy: “The current theme is so outdated on the GoDaddy site that all of the blocks aren’t fully supported in the latest version of Newspaper (which is the template for our site and many others). So I’ve been having to rebuild block by block.”
Our goal was to finish by today, but we didn’t quite make it. That said, Andy’s been tremendous and I’d like to find a way to thank him from us.
Elections
It’s that time of year. We need candidates for second vice president and to elect a Great Plains vice chair, so the officers will be on recruiting missions. I’m sure there are a lot of good candidates, but who might need some convincing.
Old business:
Honoring APSE great at judging has been discussed in the past. But considering winter judging could have changes, we’ve tabled that.
New business:
No nametags this year
Please remember to fill out the attendance sheet
Student chapters (Jorge Rojas)
It’s important that we push to increase our efforts over the next four months. I’m counting on region chairs, officers and members to identify close to two-dozen college chapters for membership before the start of the fall. Our goal is 20. (We currently have 10 active, with one dormant).
It makes the most sense for chapters to begin as APSE members in August, coinciding with the start of the school year. We have some leads and possible interest from colleges such as Arizona, Miami, Ball State, Springfield College, Morehouse and Boston U. If you regularly communicate with universities in your area, feel free to broach the subject of possible membership with journalism advisers, or with an APSE officer, who can relay it to the career development committee.
Previously, we had hurdles around advisers, and number of minimum members. We’re looking at new requirements.
Contest (Naila-Jean Meyers)
Thank you all for being here for in-person judging. To move this along, I will listen to feedback on the contest rules during the closing meeting or in the judging room this week. If you have questions about judging guidelines and what you need to do this week, we will gather after this meeting to deal with those.
Overall, we have 132 judges pouring over entries. That’s about two groups short of my ideal, but the contest will get done. It always does. We had 147 news organizations enter this year’s contest: 36 in A, 33 in B, 30 in C and 48 in D.
Among the goals we had this year:
* The continued calibration of print vs digital categories. We combined dailies and Sundays into a print portfolio of 5 sections each. We had reduced the number of print-only categories from 8 to 6, but we also returned special sections to the contest for A and B and got so many entries that those are separate categories instead of a combined category, so there are 7 print-only categories now. I have no regrets at all about moving to the portfolio and I will wait to get feedback from the judges on how this worked. I wanted to have mandatories and because of that, the entry rules may have been too complicated for their own good. Dan Spears is free to tweak them next year.
* Finding more ways to enter and honor multimedia. I loosened the rules about entering podcasts, and I created another pathway for video to be recognized within the video contest. Again, I might have made things more complicated than was necessary, but I will wait to hear back from the judges on that.
* Get more entries in D Division. I am pleased to say that entries in D are keeping pace with — and even outpacing — C in many of the writing categories. The attention on D Division entries may have ultimately hurt C Division, but I believe, for the most part, that like is competing against like and these divisions are fair.
We mentioned dues structure a little today, and though dues levels and contest divisions are not always the same, a better interrogation of the metrics we are using to categorize our membership will make the contest more balanced and fair. This is particularly true of the online-only organizations. I said at this meeting last year that we were going to have to deal with substacks/newsletters at some point, and that point was this year and I did not really have a plan for it. Our bylaws don’t really offer much guidance on that. In page views and paid subscribers and staff size, newsletters often fall in D, but in content, perhaps they fit better as C’s. That is something we need to sort out. Once I set and announced divisions I did not want to change them, but if I had waited another week for the rest of the stragglers to come in, the divisions might have looked a little different. But I believe we have four very competitive divisions this year and this is going to be fun.
The Triple Crown/Grand Slam categories are Print Portfolio, Digital, Event Coverage and Projects. Two of those categories (portfolios and projects) are being judged here in Orlando. The other two went out to remote judges about 10 days ago.
On the judging groups: I decided to make our diversity fellows the chairs of their groups. We have so many experienced judges here to serve as coaches and mentors that I believe this will work. Also, some groups were put together based on your travel schedules. And some groups are going to get two categories right off the bat, while others might get a second category once they are done with their first. Onsite judges will also get top 10s to rank.
Motion to adjourn: John Bednarowski
Second: Erik Hall
Meeting ends at 5:37 p.m.
Attendance list
Joe Battaglia, FloSports
Bill Eichenberger, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Glen Crevier, APSE
Jim Jenks, Past President
Lynn Hoppes, Past President
Bill Speros, Gambling.com
Jeff Perkins, San Antonio Express-News
Maria McIlwain, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Iliana Limon-Romero, Los Angeles Times
Roxanna Scott, USA TODAY
Oscar Dixon, Associated Press
Barry Bedlan, Associated Press
Paul Barrett, Seattle Times
Phil Kaplan, USA TODAY Network South Region
Tommy Deas, USA TODAY Network South Region
Gary Potosky, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jason Murray, The Washington Post
Lisa Wilson, The Athletic
Nick Pugliese, USA TODAY Network Florida / Palm Beach Post
Zach Cavanagh, Picket Fence Media (San Clemente/Dana Point, California)
Justin Pelletier, The News & Observer
Jamie Hancock, The Dallas Morning News
Hank Winnicki, Newsday
Sara Ziegler, The New York Times
Oskar Garcia, The New York Times
A. Sherrod Blakely, Boston University / Bleacher Report
Erik Hall, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
John Bednarowski, Marietta Daily Journal
Jim Pigniatello, MassLive / The Republican
Meredith Perri, MassLive / The Republican
Kelly Ward, Seattle Times
Zach Powell, Lock Haven Express
Alex Vejar, The Salt Lake Tribune
Damon Sayles, The Athletic
Patrick Bernadeau, Pensacola News Journal (via phone)
John Devine, Miami Herald
Malcolm Moran, IUPUI
Eric Wallace, Palm Beach Post
Myer Turner, St. Augustine Record
