ESPN.com’s T.J. Quinn and Arty Berko won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2019 contest in Breaking News for the A Division.
Quinn and Berko will be presented first-place plaques at the 2020 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis on June 27.
Quinn and Berko edged runner-up Tariq Panja of The New York Times. Bob Hohler of The Boston Globe finished third.
Sports editors in the A Division submitted 66 breaking news 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.
Judges, using their discretion, weighed the various elements of a breaking news story: timeliness, thoroughness, exclusivity and significance.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries.
1. T.J. Quinn and Arty Berko, ESPN.com, 55 points, 3 first-place vote
2.Tariq Panja, The New York Times, 40 points, 1 first-place vote
3. Bob Hohler, The Boston Globe, 38 points, 1 first-place vote
4. Maria Torres and Mike DiGiovanna, Los Angeles Times, 36 points
5. Chris Haynes, Yahoo Sports, 34 points
T6. Charles Robinson, Yahoo Sports, 30 points
T6. Brooks Kubena, The Advocate / The Times-Picayune, 30 points, 1 first-place vote
T6. Matt Stanmyre and Keith Sargeant, NJ Advance Media, 30 points
9. Sam McDowell and Vahe Gregorian, The Kansas City Star, 22 points
10. Christine Brennan, USA Today Sports, 15 points
