Brad Elliott Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 contest in Beat Writing for the D Division.
His coverage of the University of North Dakota paced him ahead of Amie Just, then of The Missoulian in Missoula, Mont..
Sports editors in the D Division submitted 28 beat writing 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, which included online links to stories for the first time this year.
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.
Schlossman 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.
Beat writing entries included five pieces of content: breaking news story, event or game coverage story, enterprise story, one piece of multimedia, and a wild-card piece of content from anywhere on the writer’s beat. Entries also included a cover letter to help show the submissions demonstrate excellence on the beat, as well as provide outside metrics of success. Judges were instructed to reward entries that show authoritative, newsy and innovative coverage.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries..
1. Brad Elliott Schlossman, Grand Forks Herald 12345
2. Amie Just, The Missoulian (Missoula, Mont.) 12345
3. Joel Reichenberger, Steamboat Pilot & Today (Steamboat Springs, Colo.) 12345
4. Ben Jones, The Tuscaloosa News 12345
T5. Robert Gagliardi, Laramie Boomerang 12345
T5. Eli Lederman, Columbia Missourian 12345
T5. Erik Bacharach, Murfreesboro Daily News Journal 1 2 3 4 5
8. Marc Weiszer, Athens Banner-Herald 1 2 3 4 5
9. Julie Jag, Santa Cruz Sentinel 1 2 3 4 5
10. Terrin Waack, The Tuscaloosa News 1 2 3 4 5
