APSE Executive Committee Meeting
4 p.m. Monday, June 26, 2017
The Roosevelt, New Orleans
Welcome
President Tommy Deas
First vice president Jeff Rosen
Second vice president John Bednarowski
Third vice president Robert Gagliardi
Secretary-Treasurer Bill Eichenberger
Executive Director Jack Berninger
Welcome to The Roosevelt, historic home of our 2017 Summer Conference.
Past presidents present:
Bill Eichenberger, now Bleacher Report then Newsday (2003)
Glen Crevier, The Star Tribune of Minneapolis (2005)
Phil Kaplan, The News Sentinel of Knoxville (2010)
Gerry Ahern, then USA Today Sports Group (2012), now USAT and Golfweek)
Mike Sheman, then Oklahoman, now Tampa Bay Times (2015)
Region representatives
Atlantic Coast, Steve Hemphill
Great Lakes, Emily Horos
Great Plains, Chris Fickett
Mid-Atlantic, Gary Potosky
Northeast, Justin Pelletier
Northwest, Paul Barrett
Southeast, Dana Sulonen
Southwest, Nic Talbot
West, Kevin Winters Morris
Representing the Associated Press: Noreen Gillespie
ADVISORY: French Quarter/Bourbon Street (road construction 4-6 blocks, enter Dauphine or Royal and cut over)
REMINDER: Wear name tags all week
Finances and budget update (Bill Eichenberger)
Bottom line, we have $153,000
We transferred $40,00 from rainy-day fund because some vendors were late in sending in checks. Monies will be replaced.
We have a Knight Foundation grant of $30,000 over two years.
Have a possibility of a grant from Gannett of $10,000.
We saved $9,300 on plaques this year by awarding just first place, triple crown and grand slam awards
Executive Director update
Jack Berninger has informed us of his plans to retire following the 2017 Conference in New Orleans. Jack’s importance to APSE and his contribution could not be overstated.
The executive committee reached out to several suggested candidates and we have settled on Glen Crevier of the Star-Tribune to replace Jack as our suggestion to serve as conference coordinator. I move now for an executive committee vote — that’s the region representatives that we recognized at the start of the meeting, past presidents and current officers — to have Glen take that position and for Bill Eichenberger step into the role of executive director – Motion passes unanimously.
Diversity Fellows recognized – will graduate this week: Jane Allison Havsy, Stef Loh, Shauntel Lowe, Diana Nearhos
Sponsors:
The Advocate
USA Today Sports
The Associated Press
Major League Soccer
ESPN
Vendors:
Football Bowl Association
Sugar Bowl
The AP
USA Today Sports Images
Committee updates:
Conference: Next winter St. Petersburg at Poynter. Year after back to Orlando.
2018 is a Winter Olympics year, so we have to go later. That means we will overlap with an auto race in St. Pete. The room rate at the Hampton Inn is $159 rate. Dates are Feb. 24-28, 2018.
2019 we have signed to return to the DoubleTree Inn and Suites in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, the same hotel near Disney where we have had it in recent years. Judging done at hotel
ALSO:
2017 Summer Conference — Joe Schiefelbein talks about New Orleans
Update on 2018 Summer Conference — we don’t have one, but we’re hopeful.
Commissioners (Gary Potosky)
Sessions primarily off the record went pretty well. Commissioners considered it more relaxed and they were able to speak freely and on/off record was less important.
People thought it was very informational.
Contest (Justin Pelletier)— Also, we’ve encountered something lately that we need to discuss among ourselves this week, and there will be a survey sent to look further into this: We’ve had low entry numbers in the digital contest and in the video and multimedia categories in our writing contest. The talk is that we’ve been evolving into digital news organizations, but that isn’t reflected in contest entries — in one digital category, we had only seven entries this year. In the digital/website contest, we have 76 total entries across all circulation categories.
So Jeff Rosen had a great idea that will be implemented immediately — if your news organization has a website, you are automatically entered into the digital/website contest. Judges will look at your website and compare it to others, with a top 10 and 10 honorable mentions selected in each category. If you haven’t entered and have a paywall, you’ll be given the opportunity to provide a password/username combination so the judges can look deeper — if not, they’ll look at what they can.
So by virtue of being in APSE, you are in the contest. Consider it a benefit of membership.
But we need to look deeper into this problem of low entries in digital categories and see what we have to do to compel people to take interest in something all of our companies say is important.
Diversity (Tommy Deas)
UCF students at the conference working on the every two years diversity study that we do: Austin Bloom and Saahil Marfatia.
— Another good year for the diversity program, with Jane Allison Havsy, Stef Loh, Shauntel Lowe and Diana Nearhos set to complete the program on Thursday at this convention.
From Jorge Rojas:
— APSE has applied for a $10,000 grant from Gannett Foundation and we are waiting to see if we’ve been approved. If so, we’ll add two more Fellows and go from 4 to 6 next year.
This year was the first under a $31,000 grant from the Knight Foundation and we are on pace to spend close to $15,000 of it in Year 1. Many past Fellows, such as Ed Guzman, Dana Sulonen and Lynn Worthy, have recently been promoted, and many more are active and making an impact on our organization, so we are happy to see such good progress.
— Jorge Rojas and Angel Rodriguez are switching as Diversity and Olympic Committee chars. Both had interest in the new posts, so they pulled off what Rojas called a “double steal.” (His words, not mine.) Both will remain active in their current committees as well, so it’ll be a win-win.
One more thing: Erin Whiteside, a sports journalism professor at the University of Tennessee is here at the meeting conducting research on the role of social and political reporting in sports media. She’s holding focus group interviews to discuss the topic and has funding to give APSE $20 for each member who participates. She scheduled the groups around our conference meetings, and has openings at 3:45 on Tuesday, 3:45 and 5:15 on Tuesday, 3:45 on Wednesday, 11 a.m. and 12:30 on Thursday. If you’re interested in participating, you can email her at ewhites2@utk.edu or text or call at 814-933-7073 to coordinate a focus group time, or another time for a one-on-one interview that fits in your schedule.
Scholarship
Shameless plug for Jorge Rojas, who teamed with former APSE president Jim Jenks to establish AWSM’s Celeste Williams Memorial Scholarship. … But mostly, this is a plug for Celeste, who would have been APSE president had she not had to deal with illness. We miss her dearly.
Legal affairs and ethics (Gerry Ahern)
This year was relatively quiet. Only a couple of issues – dust up in Eagles press box and credentialing issue in Salt Lake with the MLS.
We have a continued relationship with the NCAA. Working with them to screen credentials for the NCAA tournament. We’re looking to expand that work to the football bowl games.
Olympics
Outreach (Chris Fickett)
Stands ready to reach out.
Proud of membership drive. Lots of phone calls from Chris Fickett, Gary Potosky, Justin Pelletier helped pull in new members.
Lost members because of many papers being consolidated into larger organizations.
Red Smith Award (Joe Sullivan)
Henry Freeman was selected. Ballots for next year’s nominees will go out next winter.
Regions (Dana Sulonen)
Will have elections for vice chair in Northwest and Great Lakes.
Scholarship (Joe Sullivan)
Entries were down. Disappointed. Winners will be selected by the end of July.
Student Liaison (Tim Stephens); first student contest in the books, our winner is Emily Giambalvo of the University of Georgia.
ALSO: Reminder of president’s call for every member to sponsor a student
Website (Emily Horos)
Chris White is working to untangle the mess that is our website.
We are working through the inconvenience of sporadic outages and trying to make it more user friendly.
Writers (James Crepea)
Proposed to have writer representative on executive committee with two-year term.
Proposed to allow writers run for elected office except for Third VP.
Would like to allow writers to enter their own work from member papers.
New business:
Vote to add into bylaws the following duties for officers (formalizing how we already do it so people know what they’re getting into if they run): President will run Off-Site Judging and Student Contest; Second VP will run Digital Contest (it’s already in the bylaws that First VP runs the on-site contest). Read language that Greg Brownell has worked up and call for vote – Vote passed unanimously
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James Crepea should have language for our closing meeting to have a vote on his two proposals. I hope everyone who has strong feelings or wants to explore those ideas will make time to discuss it this week.
Other new business?
Thai dinner fourth annual on Wednesday night, we will gather at 7:30 in the lobby, there’s a restaurant a couple of blocks away. This was started for small news organization people, many of whom are here paying out of their own pockets — it’s inexpensive, exotic and fun. Anyone can come. Joey Chandler, please stand up: if you want to come, tell Joey so she can get a head count.
Joe Schiefelbein, please tell us when and where to meet for the Second Line parade to our reception.
Move to adjourn.
Attendees:
Tommy Deas, Tuscaloosa News
Jeff Rosen, Kansas City Star
John Bednarowski, Marietta Daily Journal
Robert Gagliardi, Wyoming Tribune Eagle/Laramie Boomerang
Bill Eichenberger, Bleacher Report
Jack Berninger, Executive Director
Phil Kaplan, Knoxville News Sentinel
Malcolm Moran, Sports Capital Journalism Program IUPUI
Garry Leavell, Dallas Morning News
Matt Pepin, Boston Globe
Ryan Gregg, The Villages Daily Sun
Shauntel Lowe, Bleacher Report
Jane Allison Havsy, Daily Record
Ryan Sharp, The Oklahoman
Mike Sherman, Tampa Bay Times
Jim Luttrell, New York Times
Reid Laymance, Houston Chronicle
Joe Sullivan, Boston Globe
Glen Crevier, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Michael Kates, Fan Rag Sports
Hugh Kellenberger, Clarion-Ledger
Michael Sanserino, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tyler Batiste, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Anne Costabile, Clarion-Ledger
Joey Chandler, Tuscaloosa News
Erin Whiteside, University of Tennessee
Tom Johnson, Washington Post
Glenn Yoder, Washington Post
Adam Hirshfield, Palm Beach Post
Jeff Maillet, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Bob Elliott, CBSSports.com
Mark Faller, Arizona Republic
Gerry Ahern, Golfweek
Paul Skirbina, Chicago Tribune
Mike Szvetitz, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Nicholas Talbot, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
Steve Hemphill, Roanoke Times
Dan Spears, Wilmington StarNews
Dana Sulonen, USA Today Network-Tennessee
James Crepea, AL.com
David Folse, St. Tammy Farmer
Chris Fickett, Kansas City Star
Chris White, Louisville Courier-Journal
Gentry Estes, Louisville Courier-Journal
Paul Barrett, Seattle Times
Diana C. Nearhos, The Post Star
Greg Brownell, The Post Star
Justin Pellitier, Sun Journal
Jason Murray, Syracuse Media Group
Dave Ammenheuser, USA Today Network-Tennessee
Gary Potosky, Philadelphia Inquirer
Matt Stephens, Denver Post
Emily Horos, American News
Rachel Crader, Kansas City Star
Kevin Winters Morris, Salt Lake Tribune
Joe Schiefelbein, The Advocate
