Jeff Siner and Matt Walsh of the Charlotte Observer won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors’ 2018 contest in video for the B Division.
Siner and Walsh beat the runner-up Dave Morris of The Oklahoman. Caitie McMekin of Knoxville News Sentinel placed third.
Sports editors in the B Division submitted 47 video entries. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Todd M. Adams and fellow APSE officers John Bednarowski, Lisa Wilson and Dan Spears prepared entries. In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in Orlando, 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.
Siner and Walsh will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2019 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Omni CNN Center in Atlanta on June 19. The second- through 10th-place writers will receive frameable certificates.
The video judges evaluated entries, foremost, on the strength of storytelling. Visual and auditory quality was considered. The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries:
- Jeff Siner and Matt Walsh, Charlotte Observer, 60 points, six first-place votes
- Dave Morris, The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, Okla.), 44 points
- Caitie McMekin, Knoxville News Sentinel, 34 points
T-4. Joe Rodone, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.), 32 points
T-4. Chhun Sun, Lindsey Smith and Hannah Tran, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.), 32 points
6. Mykal McEldowney, IndyStar (Indianapolis, Ind.), 31 points
7. Matt Stone, Courier Journal (Louisville, Ky.), 30 points
T8. Gavin McIntyre and Ashlen Renner, The State (Columbia, S.C.), 25 points
T8. Hannah Tran, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.), 25 points
10. Staff, IndyStar (Indianapolis, Ind.) , 17 points
