Zak Keefer of IndyStar (Indianapolis) won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 contest in Beat Writing for the B Division.
Keefer will be presented with a first-place plaque at the 2019 APSE Summer Conference Banquet at the Omni CNN Center in Atlanta on June 19.
Ryan Wood of the Green Bay Press-Gazette finished second and Jourdan Rodrigue of the Charlotte Observer finished third.
Sports editors in the B Division submitted 65 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.
The winner in each category will receive a plaque at the summer conference. 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.
- Zak Keefer, IndyStar 1 2 3 4 5, 70 points, five first-place votes
- Ryan Wood, Green Bay Press-Gazette 1 2 3 4 5, 55 points, two first-place votes
- Jourdan Rodrigue, Charlotte Observer 1 2 3 4 5, 51 points
- Adam Sparks, The Tennessean 1 2 3 4 5, 48 points
T-5. Blake Toppmeyer, Knoxville News Sentinel 1 2 3 4 5, 45 points
T-5. Jeff McDonald, San Antonio Express-News 1 2 3 4 5, 45 points
T-7. Derrick Goold, St. Louis Post-Dispatch 1 2 3 4 5, 34 points
T-7. Adam Kemp, The Oklahoman 1 2 3 4 5, 34 points
9. Mark Cooper, Tulsa World 1 2 3 4 5, 33 points
10. Brooks Kubena, The Advocate 1 2 3 4 5, 25 points
