APSE judging thread

Five circulation brackets? Why not make it like the Special Olympics and just give everyone a medal? In 250K you are picking a Top 20 from about 50 contestants. I think it needs a tweak to minimize the grade inflation at the top. And in theory it seems like the small papers are getting screwed, but in reality, if the section is three pages, why does it deserve national recognition as a great sports section? Is there some sense of entitlement now: All of us deserve validation?

I've worked on some metros that had fewer resources than others, and yes, we worked hard and tried to spend our resources creatively, but we knew that lack of space and generous travel budget would hurt us in the contest, and that is just life. If it means that much to you, get a job on a paper that is willing to spend money on the product. We should not be honoring skimpy products just because the staffers worked hard -- all it does is reinforce the idea that we can cut and cut and cut and the staff's skill can compensate. Ownership needs to know that the cutting is hurting the product, and giving out 25 percent more awards is not the way to drive this home.

Readers do not care about circulation classes. They do not judge a 30K section against similarly sized sections five states away, they judge it against whatever else is available in that market. The 30K either spends the money to cover what the nearby 75K covers (and some do), or it doesn't. The paper is either serious about delivering a complete product, or it isn't.

 

Frank's right.
The circulation brackets need tweaking.
If you guys are interested in winning awards every year, print this out and slap it on your chest:

 

I think the problem with the category splits right now are mainly that they don't properly reflect staff sizes and resources. But it's much better than it used to be. Remember when there was a 50,000-175,000 category? Ugh. I was at a 55,000-circ paper at the time and pretty much knew that if I won in that category I'd better liken it to a Pulitzer. The guys above me simply had far more time, far more resources, better editing and better research tools than I had available. The change better reflects the resources papers tend to have in common as you move up the circulation scale, but I think there's still a significant amount of overlap that needs to be considered. So give this model a look, and keep in mind I'm ballparking everything and probably doing a good amount of stereotyping too. But I think this is the type of thinking you need if another change is going to be made.

Under 25k -- Papers under this margin have thin staffs, and many don't print seven days a week, so they deserve their own category. Places like Hilton Head are the exception -- they've produced APSE winning work for a few years now even when facing papers twice their size, and would be a giant in this category. But places like Rocky Mount, N.C., have reputations for consistently developing talent and have smart people working there, yet have a tough time competing against, say, a Glens Falls.

25k to 75k -- I'd say this grouping still has reporters who generally still have to work desk shifts, have thin enough copy editing staffs to make major project designs a challenge, have sports editors who also have to lay out parts of the section, and have writers who cover multiple beats.

75k to 150k -- Somewhere in here is where everyone starts specializing. Editors generally only edit and don't do layout. Writers have specific beats and are pulled onto other assignments mostly as backup help. Copy editing staffs are better able to handle larger projects, and specialty employees (graphic artists, designers, etc.) are more common. I would argue that you can compare a Colorado Springs or Newport News to a Raleigh News & Observer or Greensboro News & Record much more favorably than you can many papers under 75k.

150k to 250k -- Another tier where staffs show separation. Staffs have multiple sports editors (such as a nigh sports editor or Sunday sports editor), and maybe even a managing editor for sports. Most beats have a main writer and a backup. Planning is done well in advance for all beats, special sections, and enterprise projects. Writers on major beats travel, and many bring photographers as well for major college football games, NFL games or postseason events. Not big enough to have resources to burn, but plenty to hit the coverage hard.

250k-up -- The giants of the industry. The sections who think big and execute big, start planning high school football preview sections in March and have four writers, an on-site editor and photographers at an NFL game. There are only about 50 papers in this category (and shrinking every day), but it's tough to compare them with many of the papers with smaller circulations.

I don't like the idea of adding another category, because more winners dilute the significance of winning APSE. But I'd like to see the categories group papers whose resources have a little more in common.

 

Thing is, Fletch, when the contest began there were no circulation breakdowns and at least one 150K ranked with the big boys. And I think it's still that way, the section is either big league or it isn't. If you are at 125K, you are covering pro and/or major-college sports. Some of the 125K-175Ks do it better than papers twice their size. Those that don't, well, why do they deserve an award? It's ridiculous that the Seattle Times and Detroit News aren't in with the biggest papers -- both competed successfully in the largest bracket when there were three brackets.

I think it's nice when a sub-25K wins, but do you really think there are 20 of them in the entire country that ought to be held up as beacons of sports journalism or even as basic, complete sports sections? I started on a 17K that was ambitious enough to staff pro sports home games, but it was, by most measures, a pretty bad section -- badly written and practically unedited, although it had some talented people who moved on to metros. It certainly shouldn't be held up as a paragon of journalism, although it would have had a huge edge over papers twice its size, given its driving distance to pro sports and its newshole needed to staff the pros and a shitload of preps. So there would be no parity in an under-25K bracket, either -- there are vast differences in resources at that level, too. There are 25K sections that have resources and ambition, and 40K sections that don't.

 

As usual, Frank is dead-on with his assessment.

Especially the part about giving too many section awards sending the message to the bigwigs that they can get away with delivering less product.

"We cut our budget 20 percent and were still an award-winning section."

I swear. If newspapers had invented the iPod, it would still have have 1 gig of storage.

 

NEWSPAPER IPOD:

 

NEWSPAPER IPOD:

 

Frank, have you seen some under 20,000 circ sports sections recently?
There are some good ones.
When I was a SE at a 13,000 circ, I took a lot of pride in how my section looked and read.
I'm not going to compare it to a metro, but we worked hard and put out a quality product on a daily basis.
On weekdays, we had an average of 4 pages but those 4 pages were well designed, well written and well edited. On the weekends, we had 6 to 8 pages.
Some of the space, we had local theme pages for our pro baseball team, golf, bowling, HS, recreation and outdoors as well as national sports such as NASCAR, coll hoops and football and the NFL.
I've had major metro SEs tell me that the section looked like it was at a paper twice its size.
But, from having judged APSE, I know the difference between a very good section and an APSE winner is the little touches where you need to spend a few hours adding elements to a page.
When you're cranking out 4 pages a night, including agate, copy editing and a little writing, you have a hard time doing that.
All the little papers are asking for is a chance to have a level playing field and to compete against sections with similar resources, not to get an award for just "showing up."

 

Nice touches, fishwrap and dooley.

Does anybody else find it, oh, disturbing the Dallas Morning News would fare as well as it did? Nothing against the DMN, because I know and respect some of the people there. But doesn't this just help the beancounter brigade justify its methods? "See, we can win just as many awards with a lean and mean newsroom."

Bad, bad development in the overall scheme of things.

 

There are quite a few small papers that look good. That's not how I assess a paper when I pick it up. For any small paper, design and even writing quality are going to be unstable from year to year because good designers and writers are going to be gone soon enough. I look at the paper's ambition -- what it covers, whether it gives me one-stop shopping for my news needs.

For instance, on one vacation at Lake Placid, I found the 35K Glens Falls paper satisfying on every level. I bought five or six other papers every day, but I would have been OK with just Glens Falls if my wife had said, "You are NOT reading six newspapers a day on our vacation in the woods!" The next year in the South, the 100K-plus in the city where we vacationed did such a joke of a job covering the Democratic National Convention that every day I also had to buy the slightly smaller paper from 100 miles away to satisfy my needs. (No, I won't buy USA Today.)

As a consumer I really couldn't care less how well it's packaged, I care whether it meets my needs. The local paper that covers my county wins design awards out the ass, but it is useless to me because there's nothing fucking in it. This is reason No. 672 why awards piss me off.

 

The DMN's entries were really strong.
I think, the shortage will begin to take its toll this year.

 

There is a shortage compared with the Dallas of the past, but is it a shortage compared with other large papers? Isn't it still a pretty large staff compared with most?