Andy Nelson, Austin Meek and Rob Denton of the The Register-Guard (Eugene, Ore.) won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2015 contest in Multimedia in the 30,000-75,000 circulation category for their entry about a former athlete and organ donor, and the woman saved by the donated lungs.
Nelson, Meek and Denton will be presented a first-place plaque at the 2016 APSE banquet. The banquet and awards dinner concludes the APSE Conference June 22-25 at the Omni-Charlotte in Charlotte, N.C.
Balloting by six APSE judges ranked Jordan ahead of runners-up Michael Bonner, Courtney Cronin, Hugh Kellenberger, Antonio Morales, Jason Munz and Daniel Paulling, The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.) and third-place finishers the staff of the York Daily Record/Sunday News.
The contest is open to APSE members. Click here to join.
Sports editors in the 30,000-75,000 circulation category submitted a total of nine multimedia entries directed by APSE member sports departments in 2015. Contest chair and APSE first vice president Tommy Deas numbered each entry, assuring they had been stripped of headlines, graphics, bylines and any other element that would identify the writer or news organization.
In late February-early March at Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., preliminary judges selected a top 3, with each judge listing the videos in order from 1 to 3 separately on a secret ballot. The final 3 were given to a second judging group, which also ranked the entries 1-3 in the same fashion. The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots, giving an entry three points for a first-place vote, two points for second and 1 point for third.
The top three is listed below with links to writers’ Twitter pages, APSE member websites and winning entries.
- Andy Nelson, Austin Meek and Rob Denton, The Register-Guard (Eugene, Ore.) 15 points, 4 first-place votes
Creswell’s Linda Merritt owes her life, and a new bond, to lung donor Rachel Givens
- Michael Bonner, Courtney Cronin, Hugh Kellenberger, Antonio Morales, Jason Munz and Daniel Paulling, The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.) 11 points, 1 first-place vote
Who is on Mississippi’s Mt. Rushmore?
- Staff, York Daily Record/Sunday News 10 points, 1 first-place vote
