To answer a question I’ve gotten a lot lately: Yes, you can still pay your APSE dues for 2024. Thank you to all of those organizations who have renewed or joined already, but it’s not too late for the rest of you.
And you need to pay dues by the end of the year in order to enter the APSE contest. Our contest chair is Dan Spears, and because Dan is really on the ball, he has already released a preview of the rules for this year. Among the notable changes:
- A new category for national beat writing, an all-division competition for writers whose beats go beyond a single team or local area.
- Event Coverage category timeframe is expanded from 24 to 48 hours.
- The word count for Short Features has been lowered to 1,350 words or less in A and B divisions and 1,100 words or less in C and D divisions.
The deadline to enter the contest is about two months away. Get your membership out of the way before you have to worry about compiling your entry.
RENEW YOUR YOUR MEMBERSHIP HERE
If you have any questions about APSE membership or problems with payment, please email me at njmeyers@startribune.com or executive director Bill Eichenberger at billapse707@gmail.com. Give Bill some grace. He’s just moved across the country and started a new job at Sportico. Congratulations, Bill!
There are benefits to APSE membership beyond just access to our contest. Like these:
Save the date: Rachel Axon of Sports Business Journal will be offering a webinar on “Beyond the box score: Reporting on college athletics data” to our members on Zoom on Friday, Nov. 17, at 2 p.m. Eastern. This session will help you see how you can use public databases to report on college sports. Journalists will get familiar with the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act data and finding other NCAA data sets. More details to come.
Looking for interns?: The internship application deadlines for many of our members arrived last week, but if your internship deadline is Dec. 1 or later, you can still be listed on our Internship Tracker and get APSE’s help promoting your openings. Email me at njmeyers@startribune.com or Lisa Wilson at lisabellwilson46@gmail.com to get added to our list. (You can watch a recent session on how to land an internship on our YouTube channel.)
Read this: Please take a few minutes to read Ben Strauss’ recent article in The Washington Post about the WNBA’s media policies. APSE has been monitoring how the league executed and enforced their media protocols this season after they closed locker rooms. If you cover a WNBA team, I am looking for feedback on how it went this season. Email me at njmeyers@startribune.com
