APSE judging thread

Hilarious..

 

Baltimore Sun sent two judges. Didn't place top 20. (It's improving, though).

 

While I don't think the judges in attendance had much to do with it, it's obvious the SEs that are heavily involved in the APSE contest get a lot of winners at their paper. Part of the reason is that they want material in their paper that would look good in award contests. The first and second vice presidents of APSE were in Long Beach last week and are SEs at Triple Crown papers. It's pretty obvious they gear their sections to do good in these contests and feel that doing good in these contests means they're doing good for their readers.

They're right because readers want to have the occasional misty-eyed blowout on someone's adversity. They're wrong because readers also want the nuts and bolts on their favorite team, and spending too much time trying to paint a sappy picture can often mean you're not spending enough time picking out the proper paint.

 

If that made no sense, it's because I'm drunk.

 

It made sense to me, but I'm drunk also.

 

St. Pete Times took a beating.

 

I wonder how Leon Carter is going to spin the Daily News' lackluster two honorable mentions into the "Best Sports Section in New York," when the NYT won a top 10 and an honorable mention.

 

Oh, I don't know ... I have only judged APSEs once, am about as inactive as anybody in the organization and have only been to two conventions in my eight years as an SE.

And we did pretty well again this year.

rb

(modified for clarity)

 

They're there because they want their papers to do good in contests.
They're also there because their staff can afford to not have them in the office.
Their staff can afford not to have them in the office because there's plenty of resources to do the damn job right.
Fact: The little guys with limited resources give as much a shit about their product as the judges do.

 

No doubt the Pittsburgh Pirates' players care, too. At the end of the season, should they get an award based on that? Put another way, do we give blowout coverage to the worst cross country team in our area because the kids try so hard? I think there is more a sense of entitlement these days, but when my cross country team went 1-11 in 1975, we didn't expect anyone to come out to watch us, much less write about us.

There are very good journalists on even sucky papers, but there is no getting around the fact that lack of resources makes them a substandard product in some ways. It is not the fault of the people who work there, but it is not the fault of the contest, either. Somebody has to be the Pirates. Watering down the contest even more is not the answer.

 

Jim Jenks runs everything, and his paper didn't come close to a Triple Crown... No knock on Jim, I'm just pointing out that attendance doesn't mean you're going to win. Look at the KC Star and the Orlando Sentinel and you'll see why they swept. It wasn't because Fanin and Hoppes attended the judging.

 

Patton, I think this gives plenty of credibility in my remark.

The places with strong desks can put out a great product. The places where they sacrifice the desk to meet readers' demands for coverage sacrifice that extra set of eyes to please the readers. And fuck cross country - we're not even talking about that. Again, 22 prep schools and five colleges and at best, two available writers each night with our desk issuel. So we can either cut coverage to the bone and fire a writer and replace him with a desk person (because we sure aren't going to expand our resources here) or just grin and bear it - and save our annual fee. It's as simple as that.

And EVEN with these resource problems, we're winning hardware like crazy on the state level. Which, again, takes me back to the post I quote above. Get real.