By John Bednarowski
APSE Second Vice President
Nick Underhill, Ramon Antonio Vargas, Matt Sledge, John Simerman of the The Advocate won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2016 contest in the Breaking News category for the 75,000-175,000 circulation category.
The group won for their coverage of former New Orleans Saints player Will Smith. They will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2017 APSE banquet. The banquet and awards dinner will conclude the APSE Summer Conference, which takes place June 26-29 at The Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans.
Sports editors in the 75,000 to 175,000 category submitted 49 Breaking News entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Jeff Rosen and fellow APSE officers Tommy Deas, John Bednarowski and Robert Gagliardi 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 February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and off-site around the country, selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10 separately on a secret ballot. Entries were given 10 points for a first-place vote, nine points for second and so on down to one point for a 10th-place vote. The final 10 were given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-10 in the same fashion. The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
The Breaking News category judges an article of a sports news development (trades, hirings, firings, franchise shifts, etc.) that occurred in the most recent news cycle, Elements of the story considered in judging include timeliness, thoroughness, exclusivity, significance.
The top 10 is listed below, with links to writers’ Twitter pages, APSE member websites and winning entries.
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