Minutes from the Associated Press Sports Editors Winter Conference and Judging opening meeting at the Doubletree at Disney Springs, Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025
President Dan Spears called the meeting to order at 4:04 p.m. and introduced first vice president Paul Barrett, second vice president Perryn Keys, third vice president Tony Maluso, executive director Bill Eichenberger and conference coordinator Glen Crevier.
Past presidents in attendance:
- Naila-Jean Meyers, Minnesota Star Tribune (2023-24)
- Jorge Rojas, The Athletic (2022-23)
- Gary Potosky, The Philadelphia Inquirer (2021-22)
- John Bednarowski, Marietta Daily Journal (2018-19)
- Tommy Deas, then Tuscaloosa News (2016-17)
- Phil Kaplan, then Knoxville News-Sentinel (2010-11)
- Lynn Hoppes, Orlando Sentinel (2008-09)
- Jim Jenks, then Philadelphia Inquirer (2006-07)
- Glen Crevier, then Star Tribune of Minneapolis (2005-06)
- Bill Eichenberger, then Newsday (2003-04)
Region representatives
Northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia. – Jim Pignatello
Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. – Patrick Obley
Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin. – Naila-Jean Meyers
West: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming – Chris Boan
Representing the Associated Press: Barry Bedlan and Oscar Dixon
Finances and budget update (Bill Eichenberger)
APSE grew a little. We had budgeted for $41,000 and ended up with a little more than $42,000. Membership went from 290 to 314 and from 157 primary to 190 primary.
We don’t see enough new faces. We need to get new faces in judging, but otherwise, our numbers are good.
Conference update (Glen Crevier)
At 5 p.m. Monday, we’ll be meeting with an official from FIFA to go over World Cup coverage. Our closing meeting will be Thursday in the Cypress Room.
If you rented a car, make sure you get half-price for APSE designation here.
Registration for the Summer Conference in Minneapolis will be open in mid-April 2025. We will return to Arlington, Virginia, in 2026. Room rates will be $169 per night.
Revenue (Tommy Deas)
We have pledges for $11,500 in sponsorships for the Summer Conference: $6,500 from The Associated Press and $5,000 from Perfect Game. Since I took over this role in 2019, we have raised more than $500,000 in sponsorships if we include in-kind sponsorships, like last summer’s reception at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Thai Night and Mini Golf
We will gather at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Coco Thai on International Boulevard, the same location we’ve had it in recent years. If you’re going, let me know if you haven’t already. Mini golf will follow across the street. Let Justin Pelletier know if you plan to play.
APSE Foundation & Diversity Fellows Class (Jorge Rojas/Lisa Wilson)
Say hello to our 13th class of Fellows, and please stand if you’re here:
- Dan Alegria, Alegria is a team lead for the USA Today Network Design Center
- Craig Allen Brown, Journalism in Sports, Culture and Social Justice department coordinator at Morehouse College, has not arrived yet
- Courtney Jacobs, sports editor at the Cape Cod Times
- Mark Kim, senior social engagement manager at The Athletic.
- Kata Stevens, sports editor for The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.
- Ainslie Lee, Florida sports content coach for Gannett’s Center for Community Journalism. Ainslie has unfortunately had a family emergency and likely will not be joining us this week.
We will hold our second annual silent auction at the Summer Conference in Minneapolis. We are accepting auction items (books, jerseys, et al) for donation. Please see Roxanna Scott or Naila-Jean Meyers during judging to arrange a donation, or email Roxanna in the coming weeks.
Roxanna Scott says last year we raised approximately $2,000.
COMMITTEE REPORTS
Diversity (A. Sherrod Blakely)
Diversity Pledge: The Diversity Pledge continues to be a valuable tool in APSE’s efforts to foster a more diverse workforce that better reflects the communities we serve.The past few months have been more about reflecting on how to move forward to continue growing this particular group within the APSE ecosystem.
This isn’t as much of an update as it is a list of suggestions to ponder in the coming days, weeks, months, etc. as to ways to amplify and strengthen the work of APSE as it relates to its diversity-related efforts.
ESTABLISHING AN IDENTITY
- Firming up what we are seeking to do in an ever-changing professional climate
- Create subgroups to work more closely with other APSE groups
- Redefine what the diversity pledge should encompass
- Ways to work with students that go above and beyond having a student chapter
- Create additional incentives beyond free ads for companies that
- participate in diversity pledge
- Increased advocacy through social media message
- A means of bringing more students into who we are, what we do
- Expanding our reach
- Sports marketing, Sports public relations
- Create collaborative efforts regionally
- Enhance APSE presence beyond regional, national conventions
Membership (Jason Murray)
Dan Spears will have more on membership.
Regions update (Michael Kates, Gary Potosky)
Northeast Meeting (Jim Pignatiello): Region meeting is April 14 at Temple. We sent out an overview, but we will do a “how we did it” version of a panel in the Northeast. Really excited to have a meeting in person again. Anyone from any region can attend if so inclined.
Southeast Meeting (John Devine): Tommy Deas speaking on John’s behalf. Tentative date for the region meeting is May 12 at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Still aiming for Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey to attend.
Midwest Meeting (Dan Spears): Jason Hoffman is working with the Cincinnati Reds as being the host for a meeting sometime in April. More details to come.
West Meeting (Chris Boan): Chris and Maria McIlwain have been trying to find an in-person solution, but we’ll at least have a virtual meeting this spring. Chris asks that if anyone present from the West region would like to help host, please reach out to him.
Career Advancement (Lisa Wilson)
Apologies for missing judging for a second straight year because of a work conflict.
We welcomed the University of Tennessee (adviser Shannon Scovel) as our 14th student chapter last fall. Lisa spoke with students at Hampton University in January about forming an APSE chapter. Dr. James Ford (who connected with Lisa at NABJ last summer) has the application for membership and has committed to apply.
We hosted our annual How to get an Internship virtual session on Oct. 29 with leaders from The Athletic (Leon Carter, Claudio Cabrera, Julie Scott and Ryan Mayer). It had great engagement, and President Dan Spears attended to let the students know about the benefits of being a student chapter/member. We will host two more sessions (Speaker Q&As) in March and April before final exams in May. Details to come. Encourage all students in your network to attend regardless of APSE membership.
The APSE mentorship pairings will be announced at the Summer Conference. Lisa will work on a Google form for mentors/mentees to sign up/share ideas and also has been brainstorming more formalized programming/support.
Lisa and Dan have been discussing ideas to enhance this committee. We are grateful for all ideas and levels of support.
Other summer journalism conferences:
AWSM: Iliana says that AWSM will soon be announcing an in-person conference for AWSM this August in Phoenix. More details to come.
NAHJ: July 8-12 in Chicago.
NABJ: August 6-10 in Cleveland.
AAJA: July 30-August 3 in Seattle.
NLGJA: September 4-7 in Atlanta.
Commissioners (Hank Winnicki)
I don’t have precise dates yet for the commissioners’ meeting, but it will likely be in the final two weeks of April or first week of May. It’s just a matter of getting the commissioners to commit.
Legal affairs and ethics (Gerry Ahern and John Cherwa)
We consulted with the Baltimore Banner in advance of what they believed would be punitive action by the Ravens after some tough reporting. To my knowledge nothing has happened yet, of course, it is the offseason. So we are watching that.
We also worked with the Denver Post and the Big 12 Conference for assurances that the University of Colorado’s directive to not allow a Post columnist to ask questions in sessions would not bleed over to events not at Colorado. The situation with Deon Sanders and CU is a tough one because Sanders has in his contract that he doesn’t have to talk to the media if he doesn’t want to.
We also talked with the L.A. Times and SoCal News Group about access issues with the USC and UCLA football programs.
Olympics (Roxanna Scott)
A couple weeks ago, the USOC and Paralympic committee met with media representatives on a call and said they granted credentials without an in-person meeting. Those on call agreed it was a fair process. If you have an office space, you have to let Milan know by Feb. 28. It is also time to start looking at housing.
World Cup 2026 (Paul Barrett)
We formed a committee for the 2026 men’s World Cup to start discussing how we can work together on credentials, logistics, communication to APSE members and any issues that pop up. We first got together in August, and we’ve met a few times since then.
Also, some of the media-relations staff at FIFA are here in Orlando to do a Q&A session with us tomorrow at 5 in the Buena Vista room. They will give a short presentation and then will open it up for questions. If you’re planning to cover the World Cup, this is a great opportunity to introduce yourself before things get really busy. And I think some of the FIFA folks will be at our cocktail party tonight.
If you would like to join this committee, please let me know.
Red Smith Award (Matt Pepin)
Red Smith Award: Voting will have begun by the time we meet Sunday, with a March 10 deadline. Hoping to have a winner revealed on or around March 17.
Want to ensure we’re looking everywhere for best candidates and those from small shops shouldn’t be afraid or reluctant to go up against bigger properties.
Scholarships (Phil Kaplan)
More details to come after the conference. Garry D. Howard’s two scholarships for HBCU students have again been matched. And we will have two more scholarships again this year from APSE. If you’re interested in being a contest judge, please let me know. We’re looking at probably 30-40 applicants.
Student Contest (Iliana Limon Romero)
Iliana will be gathering information for this year’s contest and releasing details soon.
Website/social (Perryn Keys)
We’ll be updating contest results as they come in. As for the website, I would like to update and/or get rid of the Twitter/X feed on the right-hand side of the website. I will check with Andy Rhinehart on a simple way to do that as we go down the road.
If there’s something that you feel needs to be on the website that isn’t already there, please come talk to me about it. Also: are there social posts and/or “other platform” things such as videos, Instagram and other things that we should be doing? Something we can use as a recruitment tool for students, young journalists or smaller-size potential members?
OLD BUSINESS
TIDES report (Dan)
TIDES has a new director in Brandon Brown, who previously was an intern for the program during his time at UCF.
He and I have talked several times about TIDES and how APSE can continue and improve our relationship. The first thing we’ve tackled is the survey on our employees.
It’s been more than a year since we tried to receive information for the latest survey results, with little success. Instead of emailing more than 100 folks with individual Excel sheets, Brandon has moved the survey to an online Qualtix document that people can easily update online and not have to worry about attachments.
All members will get an email this week with a link to the survey, and we’ll be putting a note at the top of this week’s contest announcement posts on the website telling editors to check their mail this week for that survey.
This is an important piece of our outreach and I hope that everyone finds this an easier way to participate.
Brandon will also be here tomorrow afternoon for our World Cup meeting if you would like to meet him and talk more about TIDES. He and I have talked about more ways to create outreach, surveys and information that can be used in the industry. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please reach out to me, or to Brandon tomorrow.
NEW BUSINESS
2026 Conferences (John Bednarowski, Dan Spears)
We have not had judging west of the Mississippi River in a long time (since 2008, when it was in Las Vegas. The last time it was outside of Florida was in 2012, when the contest was in Indianapolis).
I am working with South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa in Las Vegas, which is on Las Vegas Boulevard. It is 10 minutes from McCarran International Airport, and it is more cost-efficient for a group like us.
They have proposed two dates:
Feb. 15-19 at $105 per night, including the resort fee.
Feb. 22-26 ($90 on Sunday, then $135 per night the rest of the week).
The resort fee includes wifi, gym access, parking and airport shuttle services. This is really one-stop shopping: It includes a 16-screen movie theatre, a 64-lane bowling center, an equestrian center, a full spa, a salon and 135,000-square-foot casino.
It would be a year-by-year deal. It would also potentially bring Orlando into play for a future Summer Conference.
Jorge Rojas asked if there is a room quota we need to fill. John said the proposal has 40 rooms down, but with no attrition. In other words, if we only get 28 rooms, there are no additional costs. Jorge also asked about those who bring families who may not want to stay that far off the strip. John said it’s a 25-minute Uber ride to the strip.
Jim Pignatiello asked about what effect it would have on attendance. Dan Spears says it’s possible that people who are from Texas, Oklahoma and elsewhere — who don’t come to Orlando — might come to Las Vegas instead.
Oscar Dixon asked about maybe not doing judging in Las Vegas during a Winter Olympics year.
Chris Boan said APSE needs to do something to appeal to West Coast members. Moving judging to the West Coast, he said, can send a message that we are a national organization and not a strictly East Coast and Southeast organization.
Ed Reed asked how attendance was from the recent Las Vegas Summer Conferences. Glen Crevier said numbers were not great, but they were countered by bringing in sponsors and past presidents.
Sherrod Blakely asked about the process to make this decision. Dan Spears answered that this is up to the officers group to make the decision — but because this is a potential change, it was fair to put out this proposal in front of as many people as possible.
Gary Potosky asked: Do we have any sense that we would offset the losses of Southeast judges with the addition of Western judges? John Bendarowski said he has not contacted “the folks out west,” but he believes that for the most part, the vast majority of people who attend the winter conference in Orlando would still attend in Las Vegas.
Chris Boan said he surveyed West Region editors about a potential region meeting, and Las Vegas was the most popular answer.
Tommy Deas said he tends to believe there will be some pickup in judges from the West Coast, a firm number is just “unknowable at this point.”
Sherrod asked about when we need to let South Point know. John Bednarowski said he’s hoping to let them know this week to at least get the ball rolling.
Tommy Deas asked about Western remote judges. Paul Barrett said he didn’t have specific numbers but will check; he said there are some.
Committee changes & volunteers (Dan Spears)
- Region committees merge into Career Advancement, helping Lisa Wilson
- Improved direction for Membership Committee and seeking volunteers
- Student Contest Committee is going from its own committee to the Second VP
- Scholarship Committee is working more closely with student chapters and career advancement
Naila said in her experience, a personal email (one-to-one, not en masse) is the best way to communicate with members or potential members. During her tenure as president, she got more responses from direct emails than mass emails or web posts.
Membership renewals will include a form line about which committee you’d like to be on, so a list is automatically generated.
A reminder that we’ll begin taking nominations for second vice president at the closing meeting. If you have questions or interest or have someone you’re reaching out to, please find Dan Spears or an officer throughout the week.
Finally, if you have a car and are willing to make a short run down the street, please come talk to Dan Spears afterward.
Contest (Paul Barrett)
First I want to say thanks to all of you for taking the time to come here and judge the 2024 contest.
We had 178 news organizations enter this year, eight more than last year’s total. It’s a lot of outstanding work to read, and I also want to thank those who already have given their time to judge remotely. It is greatly appreciated.
We’ve continued many of the new things from the past couple of years, and we added a new category this year. High School Beat Writing has replaced the Game Story category, and we had 79 combined entries, which is very encouraging.
Also new this year is judging feedback that is being provided in two C and D categories this year: Short Feature and High School Beat Writing. I’m excited to see how this turns out, and I want to give a big thanks to Matt Pepin for this excellent idea, and for his willingness to take the lead and see it through. Matt, anything you want to say? Matt thanks those who volunteered. We stuck to four categories to keep it reasonable and manageable.
And finally, I want to make sure you all know that Room 111 is contest central. That’s where the officers will be all week if you need anything or want to stop by and say hi.
My cell number is 206-471-2983 in case you need anything or have any questions.
Here are the judging groups:
Investigative: Naila-Jean Myers, Gary Potosky, A. Sherrod Blakely
National Beat Writing: Justin Pelletier, Jim Pignatello and Chris Boan
Division A Long Feature: Ed Reed, Dan Alegria, Elaine Sung (remote)
Division A Event Coverage: Courtney Jacobs, Tommy Deas and Patrick Obley
Divisions A&B Special Sections: John Bednarwoski, Barry Bedlan, Greg Brownell
Division B Print Portfolio: Maria McIlwain, Jason Murray, Iliana Limon Romero (remote)
Division C Beat Writing: Oscar Dixon, Jeffrey Perkins, Jim Jenks
AP contest and photos: Kevin Manahan, Bill Eichenberger, Nate Mink
Division C High School Beat Writing: Roxanna Scott, Matt Pepin, Mark Kim
Division D Digital: Phil Kaplan, Eric Wallace, Kata Stevens
Division D Beat Writing: Jorge Rojas, Jamie Hancock, Craig Allen Brown
Division D Short Feature: John Devine, Hank Winnicki, Glen Crevier
From Matt Pepin on the Contest feedback pilot program: I am planning to have a brief meeting after the opening meeting with judges in the C and D divisions of high school beat writing and short features. We are all systems go to have judges in those categories provide short critiques to the writers and their editors, and that feedback will be delivered after the conclusion of the winter conference.
Motion to adjourn: John Bednarowski
Second: Chris Boan
Meeting ends at 5:19 p.m
Members in attendance:
Perryn Keys, The Buffalo News
Tony Maluso, Capital Gazette
Paul Barrett, The Seattle Times
A. Sherrod Blakely, Boston University
Lynn Hoppes, APSE past president
Dan Alegria, USA Today Network
Kata Stevens, Post & Courier
Courtney Jacobs, Cape Cod Times
Naila-Jean Meyers, Minnesota Star Tribune
Maria McIlwain, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jamie Hancock, Dallas Morning News
Jim Jenks, Perfect Game; APSE past president
Hank Winnicki, Newsday
Gary Potosky, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jorge Rojas, The Athletic; APSE past president
Tommy Deas, USA Today Network; APSE past president
Jeffrey Perkins, San Antonio Express-News
Chris Boan, Gambling.com group
Jason Murray, The Washington Post
John Bednarowski, Marietta Daily Journal; APSE past president
Greg Brownell, Glens Falls Post-Standard
Roxanna Scott, USA Today
Oscar Dixon, The Associated Press
Barry Bedlan, The Associated Press
Glen Crevier, APSE past president
Matt Pepin, Boston Globe
Phil Kaplan, USA Today Network South Region; APSE past president
Patrick Obley, Daily Sun/SunPreps
Jim Pignatiello, MassLive
Bill Eichenberger, APSE executive director; APSE past president
