Henry Bushnell, Nick Bromberg, Jay Busbee, Jennifer Starks, Cassandra Negley, Lila Bromberg and Shakeia Taylor of Yahoo! Sports won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2020 contest in Category A Projects.
They will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2021 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on Aug. 18.
Matthew Futterman of The New York Times finished second and Sammy Jo Hester, David Wharton and Helene Elliott of the Los Angeles Times 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 A submitted 25 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 10th-place finishers will receive frameable certificates.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries, and voting results.
1. Henry Bushnell, Nick Bromberg, Jay Busbee, Jennifer Starks, Cassandra Negley, Lila Bromberg and Shakeia Taylor, Yahoo! Sports 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 74 points, 4 first-place votes
2. Matthew Futterman, The New York Times 1, 2, 3, 4, 67 points
3. Sammy Jo Hester, David Wharton and Helene Elliott, Los Angeles Times 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 64 points, 3 first-place votes
4. Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated 1, 2, 3, 4, 48 points
5. Steve Berkowitz, Aria Gerson, Paul Myerberg, Tom Schad, Brent Schrotenboer and Matt Wynn, USA Today 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 42 points
6. Dan Pompei, The Athletic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 39 points, 1 first-place vote
7. NJ Advance Media Sports Staff, NJ Advance Media 1, 31 points
8. Sean Keeler, Kyle Fredrickson, Kyle Newman, Matt Schubert and Mark Kiszla, The Denver Post 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 27 points
9. Jason Mackey Brian Batko and Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 26 points
10. Staff, Tampa Bay Times, staff 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 22 points
