ESPN.com’s Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2019 contest in Explanatory story for the A Division.
Fainaru and Fainaru-Wada will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2020 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis on June 27.
Fainaru and Fainaru-Wada edged Mirin Fader of Bleacher Report and Aaron Carter of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who tied for second.
Sports editors in the A Division submitted 63 explanatory stories. The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Contest chair Lisa Wilson and fellow APSE officers Todd M. Adams, Gary Potosky and Dan Spears prepared the entries.
In February, preliminary judges at the APSE Winter Conference in St. Petersburg, 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.
The winner in each category will receive a plaque at the summer conference. The second- through 10th-place writers will receive frameable certificates.
Explanatory stories include trends, issues, original ideas and it should explain something. They shed new light on issues and personalities in the news. They are more than the feature and less than the project entry. They go beyond the “yesterday” of the breaking news story.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries.
1. Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, ESPN.com, 41 points, 3 first-place votes
T2. Mirin Fader, Bleacher Report, 39 points
T2. Aaron Carter, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 39 points
4. Michael Casagrande, AL.com, 38 points, 1 first-place vote
5. Bryce Miller, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 35 points, 1 first-place vote
6. Kurt Streeter, The New York Times, 33 points
7. Brooks Kubena, The Advocate | Times-Picayune, 28 points, 1 first-place vote
8. Marc Stein, The New York Times, 27 points
9. Beth Kassab, Orlando Sentinel, 26 points
10. Greg Riddle, The Dallas Morning News, 24 points
