Bret McCormick of The Herald in Rock Hill, S.C., won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 contest in Multimedia for the C Division.
His entry beat out runners-up Andrew John and Robert Hopwood of the Desert Sun in the final voting. Maria McIlwain of The Bryan-College Station Eagle finished third.
Sports editors in the C Division submitted 12 multimedia 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 set of finalists, with each judge ranking the entries in order from 1 to 5 separately on a secret ballot. Entries were given five points for a first-place vote, four points for second and three for third. The final five were given to a second judging group, which ranked the entries 1-5 in the same fashion.
The winner and final rankings are determined by tallying the ballots.
McCormick 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 fifth place writers will receive frameable certificates.
For this contest, multimedia included interactive graphics and slideshows, a combination of those items, or any other produced product that falls under the description of multimedia (other than simple videos). Entries were judged on strength of storytelling, with visual and auditory quality considered. Up to five pieces in a series on the same topic could be considered one single entry.
The top five is listed below with links to the winning entries..
1. Bret McCormick, The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.) 29 points, five first-place votes
2. Andrew John and Robert Hopwood, The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.) 22 points, one first-place vote
3. Maria McIlwain, The Bryan-College Station Eagle 22 points
4. Maria McIlwain and Katy Barber, The Bryan-College Station Eagle 17 points
5. Brandon Foster and Davis Potter, Casper Star-Tribune 9 points
