Dana Hunsinger Benbow of the Indianapolis Star won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2020 contest in Category B Long Feature.

Hunsinger Benbow will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2021 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on Aug. 18.

Blake Toppmeyer of the Knoxville News Sentinel finished second and Gordon Monson of the Salt Lake Tribune was third.

A Long Feature entry is a feature story that is more than 1,500 words. This entry is what we commonly call “Enterprise” in our newsrooms.

Sports editors in Category B submitted 51 stories. The contest is open to APSE members. 

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Contest chair and First Vice President Gary Potosky and fellow APSE officers President Lisa Wilson, Second Vice President Jorge Rojas and Third Vice President Steve Hemphill prepared the entries.

Because this year’s in-person APSE Winter Conference was canceled due to the pandemic, all judging was remote during three weeks in February. Each category had a set of judges examine all entries, choose a Top 10 as a group (in some cases, the ranking includes fewer or more than 10 entries), and each of those judges ranked the finalists individually. A second set of judges in each category then also ranked those finalists.

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 finishers will receive frameable certificates.

The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries, and voting results.

1. Dana Hunsinger Benbow, Indianapolis Star, 49 points, 3 first-place votes

2. Blake Toppmeyer, Knoxville News Sentinel, 46 points

3. Derrick Goold, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 40 points, 1 first-place vote

4. Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 37 points, 1 first-place vote

5. Shannon Russell, Courier Journal, 35 points, 1 first-place vote

6. Scott Fowler, Charlotte Observer, 33 points

7. Andrew Carter, Charlotte Observer, 31 points

8. Aaron Kasinitz, PennLive/The Harrisburg Patriot-News, 26 points

9. Jason Wolf, The Buffalo News, 24 points

10. James Boyd, The Times of Northwest Indiana, 9 points

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