Joe Drape, David W. Chen, Tiffany Hsu, Larry Buchanan and Karl Russell of The New York Times won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2020 contest in Category A Explanatory.
Drape, Chen, Hsu, Buchanan and Russell will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2021 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on Aug. 18.
Will Hobson of The Washington Post finished second and Barry Svrluga and Dave Sheinin of The Washington Post placed third.
An Explanatory story can include trends, issues, original ideas and it should explain something. It sheds new light on issues and personalities in the news. It is more than a feature story and less than a project. It goes beyond the “yesterday” of a breaking news story.
Sports editors in Category A submitted 55 stories. The contest is open to APSE members.
Contest chair and First Vice President Gary Potosky and fellow APSE officers — President Lisa Wilson, Second Vice President Jorge Rojas and Third Vice President Steve Hemphill prepared the entries.
Because this year’s in-person APSE Winter Conference was canceled due to the pandemic, all judging was remote during three weeks in February. Each category had a set of judges examine all entries, choose a Top 10 as a group (in some cases, the ranking includes fewer or more than 10 entries), and each of those judges ranked the finalists individually. A second set of judges in each category then also ranked those finalists.
The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
The winner in each category will receive a plaque at the summer conference. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries, and voting results.
1. Joe Drape, David W. Chen, Tiffany Hsu, Larry Buchanan and Karl Russell, The New York Times, 52 points, 3 first-place votes
2. Will Hobson, The Washington Post, 42 points, 1 first-place vote
3. Barry Svrluga and Dave Sheinin, The Washington Post, 38 points, 1 first-place vote
4. Peter Keating, ESPN.com, 35 points, 1 first-place vote
5. Adam Jude, The Seattle Times, 33 points
T6. Nathan Fenno and David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 30 points
T6. Matt Baker, Tampa Bay Times, 30 points
8. Jovan Buha, The Athletic, 28 points
T9. John McGonigal and Craig Meyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 21 points
T9. Scott Dochterman, The Athletic, 21 points
