Nancy Armour, Lindsay Schnell and Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY Sports won first place in the 2022 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division A Explanatory Writing category for their examination of how the Roe vs. Wade reversal impacts college athletes.
APSE contest winners will be honored at the 2023 APSE Summer Conference banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on July 12. Click here to register for the conference, which begins on July 9 and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of APSE.
Tariq Panja and Rory Smith of The New York Times were second, and Alden Gonzalez and Marly Rivera of ESPN took third.
USA TODAY Sports will receive a plaque. The second- through 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.
Sports editors in Division A submitted 60 entries in Explanatory.
Contest chair Naila-Jean Meyers and fellow APSE officers Jorge Rojas, Dan Spears and Ed Reed prepared the entries. The contest is open to APSE members.
Contest results: Sections, digital, video | Writing and photography
In February, judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and remote judges around the country selected a top 10, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 10. 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.
Explanatory stories include reporting on trends, issues, and original ideas that sheds new light on issues and personalities in the news. They go beyond the “yesterday” of the breaking news story.
The top 10 is listed below with voting results and links to the winning entries.
- Nancy Armour, Lindsay Schnell and Steve Berkowitz, USA TODAY Sports 54 points (2 first-place votes)
- Tariq Panja and Rory Smith, The New York Times 53 points (2 first-place votes)
- Alden Gonzalez and Marly Rivera, ESPN 36 points (1 first-place vote)
- Julie Kliegman, Sports Illustrated 34 points
- Chelsea Janes, The Washington Post 31 points
- Jeff Eisenberg,Yahoo Sports 29 points
- (tie) Kevin Armstrong, NJ Advance Media 26 points
7. (tie) Nicole Auerbach and Matt Fortuna, The Athletic 26 points
9. Leah Vann, The Advocate/The Times-Picayune 23 points (1 first-place vote)
10. Matt Stanmyre, NJ Advance Media 17 points
