Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2019 contest in Beat Writing for the A Division.
Dougherty will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2020 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis on June 27.
Dougherty edged runner-up Marc Spears from The Undefeated. Matt Stanmyre of NJ Advance Media and Brooks Kubena of The Advocate / Times-Picayune tied for third.
Sports editors in the A Division submitted 64 beat writing entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Lisa Wilson and fellow APSE officers Todd M. Adams, Gary Potosky and Dan Spears prepared the entries. In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in St. Petersburg, 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 winner in each category will receive a plaque at the summer conference. The second- through 10th-place writers will receive frameable certificates.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries.
1. Jesse Dougherty, The Washington Post 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 49 points, 3 first-place votes
2. Marc J. Spears, The Undefeated 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 42 points
T3. Matt Stanmyre, NJ Advance Media 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 40 points, 1 first-place vote
T3. Brooks Kubena, The Advocate/The Times-Picayune (Baton Rouge/New Orleans) 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 40 points, 2 first-place votes
5. Pete Thamel, Yahoo Sports 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 39 points
6. Amie Just, The Advocate/The Times-Picayune (Baton Rouge/New Orleans) 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 34 points
7. Michael Casagrande, AL.com 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 33 points
8. Jeff McLane, The Philadelphia Inquirer 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 26 points
9. Tim Healey, Newsday 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 14 points
10. Chandler Rome, Houston Chronicle 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 — 13 points
