James Boyd of the Times of Northwest Indiana won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2020 contest in Category B Projects.
Boyd will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2021 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on Aug. 18.
Dirk Chatelain of the Omaha World-Herald finished second and Greg Luca, Jeff McDonald, Nick Moyle, Mike Finger and David Hinojosa of the San Antonio Express-News placed third.
A Projects entry sheds new light on personalities and issues in the news, including trends and original ideas. It is pre-planned content that is conceived and executed as a larger body of work. It is not ongoing coverage of a news event over a period of time where a number of stories are compiled for an entry.
Sports editors in Category B submitted 18 entries. 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 7th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.
The top 7 is listed below with links to the winning entries, and voting results.
1. James Boyd, The Times of Northwest Indiana 1, 2, 3, 4, 32 points, 1 first-place vote
2. Dirk Chatelain, Omaha World-Herald 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 31 points, 3 first-place votes
3. Greg Luca, Jeff McDonald, Nick Moyle, Mike Finger, David Hinojosa, San Antonio Express-News 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 29 points, 1 first-place vote
4. Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 23 points
T5. Staff, The Buffalo News 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 18 points
T5. Ed Graney, Las Vegas Review-Journal 1, 2, 3, 4, 18 points, 1 first-place vote
7. Bill Ordine, Gambling.com 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17 points
