Ron Wilkins and Nathan Baird of the Journal & Courier won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors 2018 contest in Breaking News Story for the C Division.
Wilkins and Baird 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.
The duo edged runners-up Kris Henry of the Mail Tribune and Chadd Cripe of the Idaho Statesman.
Sports editors in the C Division submitted 48 breaking news story 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.
Breaking news entries were judged on their timeliness, thoroughness, exclusivity and significance. Editors were allowed to submit a cover letter to explain who broke the story, how quickly the information was published and how it might have been expanded upon for print or later news cycles.
The top 10 is listed below with links to the winning entries.
1. Ron Wilkins and Nathan Baird, Journal & Courier (Lafayette, Ind.) 51 points, three first-place votes
T-2. Kris Henry, Mail Tribune (Medford, Ore.) 49 points, two first-place votes
T-2. Chadd Cripe, Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) 49 points, one first-place vote
T-4. Travis L. Brown, The Bryan-College Station Eagle 37 points
T-4. Andrew John, The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.) 37 points
T-6. Cory Giger, Altoona Mirror 26 points
T-6. Nathan Baird, Journal & Courier (Lafayette, Ind.) 26 points
T-8. Mike DeFabo, Anderson Herald-Bulletin 21 points
T-8. Alex Riley, Wilmington (N.C.) StarNews 21 points
10. Brant Wilkerson-New, News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.) 20 points
