APSE Contest results

I'm neither at a small paper nor a monster, but it seems there is always a push here on the annual "contest results are out!" SJ thread to even up the number of newspapers in each contest category. The 39 or 35 (or whatever number it is) papers in the largest category is always brought up.

To me, if there are only 39 metro papers, then so be it. If it seems a little too everybody-gets-a-ribbon, then get rid of the honorable mention altogether. (Not sure why those exist anyway.) But moving the Allentown Morning Call into a bigger category doesn't make it a metro paper, and certainly doesn't give it the resources to compete fairly with the Post and NYT. The 10 best sports sections in the big category are going to win no matter how many papers you move up to compete. They're good sections. You'd just be burying good mid-sized papers underneath them.

The goal should be to have sports sections competing against others of similar size and scope, and there happen to be a lot more small papers than big ones. If it were the parents of an eighth grade basketball player left off an all-district team, we'd be the first to say, Sorry, the world ain't fair.

The other thing to remember is, the closer you get to putting the same number of papers in each category, the more top-heavy the writing categories become, since larger papers have significantly bigger staffs. OK, what's left of those staffs are still significantly bigger. They are, right? I may have to check this with my P.T.I. fact checker.

 

You can play up. Most papers don't. Me? I'd rather compete against the biggest and best regardless of how much larger their staff, space and travel budgets might be. I was upset two years ago when our circ slipped and we chose to compete against the mid-majors instead of accepting the bigger challenge. Wish more papers would play up. This year, the contest circs dropped, and we were back with the Big Boys. Some weren't happy, but I was. Go against LeBron, not Delonte. I'd love to see Augusta enter its Masters section against NYT, WaPo, LAT. How cool would it be if that won?

 

Well, the limits per category helps even that out a bit.

 

True. Forgot about that. Although I guess you're having to survive in-house preliminaries just to make the final. Theoretically, you could have written the second best investigative piece in the country for 2010 and no judge sees it cause Izzy Gould sits three cubicles down.

 

Note that the results are all in.

 

This will lead you back through every one of the other result by clicking at the link at the bottom:

http://apsportseditors.org/newsletter/contest-results-have-been-posted/

 

I know they kept the same circulation cutoffs -- were any papers, um, relegated to lower divisions? It's going to be a sad day when they recalibrate the divisions to accommodate lower circs across the board.

 

There is also an under-15,000 category for sections.

 

Congrats to my boys back in Florence.

 

I'm curious if anybody played up. I'm pretty sure Miami did for a couple of years when its circ slipped below 250K.