APSE VOTES NO TO CONTEST CHANGES (shocccckerrr!)

my letter has already been sent.

i don't care about the apse awards. they're great if you win, but they don't really matter. i've won a couple at a previous paper and they didn't get me anywhere. future awards won't either.

my beef is about apse looking out for the smaller papers. i joined to hear feedback on our section and stories and to get advice from some of the best in the biz about how to run a paper in the ever-changing world of newspapers. i get none of that, save for a half-ass effort from some guy from the Chicago Tribune who writes three words about our section.

it usually reads something like ... only three pages. if you had more, it could be a better section. no shit?

it's obvious apse does not give a crap about the smaller papers. the big-time sports editors told us all that with this vote. so why should my paper, well under the 40,000 circulation mark, join apse again? what do they do for me? i'll save the $95.

 

http://apse.dallasnews.com/2008/judging/022908howard.html

 

These two grafs should be all the proof you need that those in power in APSE have no interest in anything except expanding that power.

The vote by members of the APSE Executive Committee, past presidents and region chairs in attendance ended in a 6-6 tie, with one voter abstaining, which meant, according to APSE bylaws, the motion was defeated.
This result apparently surprised most in attendance since just before official vote, a straw poll – a show of hands – indicated the overwhelming majority of the 59 Sports Editors in attendance were in favor of changing the current configuration.


APSE is nothing but an elitist insiders' club and all you guys at small papers mean nothing to them.
Sorry, that's the way I've always seen this organization behave.

 

That's shameful. "Yeah guys, we got you, don't worry. Just take this knife between the shoulder blades first."

 

Is that because those of us at less than 100k papers have allowed the big papers to control it?

There are a lot more of us than of them. So why do the big papers dominate APSE? Why are there national convention seminars on preparing to cover the Beijing Olympics, when the vast majority of APSE member papers aren't sending anybody to China?

 

I posted a longer note on the other thread, but I will here, too.

I voted "no" on the proposal even though my committee recommended the categories. We didn't recommend we change, our job was to try to produce numbers, which we did, to show where cutoffs might occur. And we're a 213,000 daily and don't play up. So feel free to spread drivel and vitriol all over that for a few pages, but since I post with my name, and I like transparency, there you have it.

My take was while a lot of hands went up in public, a lot of the mid size papers really didn't want the change. And I think quite frankly that folks who do a lot for APSE -- yes the gruntwork -- were going to be penalized. That said, who's to say we can't change the contest on an experimental basis to maybe split judging for the sections in the small group and keep writing the same (all U-40)? This dog can still hunt, and with the help of a guy like Toby Carrig, we can get something done. It won't even take a vote. We likely can do this as part of the contest. It doesn't change overall categories and it allows smaller sections to get their judging against like sections.

But don't think for a moment this doesn't happen up above, too. There are plenty of disparities in staffing levels all across the board. The small papers don't own that beef on their own.

As for critiques, I stopped them at the contest level when I was contest chair. Why? Because they are drive-by critiques on 4 sections a year, when particularly in the smaller categories you have tons of sections to judge and very little time to critique. And some of the comments sent to those papers were no help at all and some were just plain rude. Rather than see an SE get that type of drive-by crap, we set up a Critique committee, chaired by Celeste Williams in Ft. Worth (see the APSE Website) when I was president the next year.

This is not a perfect organization. Far from it. But we want to move past the contest and into more for sports journalism. If people want to pull their $95 for next year, so be it. That's their call. But APSE is more than the contest. But you have to get involved to reap its benefits. I mention a couple ways of doing that on the other thread.

Thanks for reading.

 

I'm not sure Inky if those of you at <100Ks allow the bigger papers to control of is just the chosen few (all from larger papers) don't allow anyone else to control it.

 

Jerry, I certainly appreciate your candor on this and the other thread.

You mention getting involved with APSE, and I think this is something that goes along with spnited's comments. It's tough for somebody in a small shop to get involved.

There was a desperate call for judges for the most recent contest. My region chair was practically begging for people to do it. But as somebody at a small shop I can't take time away during a very busy part of the year and, more importantly, can't afford to foot the bill for airfare and hotel.

 

jerry, much like jim jenks earlier, is a perfectly honest, upstanding, well-meaning, principled and everything-else-good-you-can-say-about-him guy who just can't see what everyone else is complaining about. (well, jerry can to some extent, but you get the point.) you can tell jerry really is doing what he thinks is best. as Thornton Melon once said, "he really seems to care."

HOWEVER,

the complainers are told to get over the contest, when THE COUNCIL OF TWELVE's decision is clearly all about the contest and the big papers' places in it. good lord. no matter how high the level is at 250-plus, competing in a field of 34 papers should be embarrassing. come on. it's set up so that the DMN can continue to make claims like this: "For a record 25th consecutive year, America's sports editors have voted SportsDay's daily and Sunday sections to be among the top 10 in the country." that's the status quo. now, again, these guys are in the majors, we all know that. maybe all the same papers would win if you added 175-up. but we'll never know.

until then, everyone continue to pat yourselves on the back for making the top 20 out of 34.

and the next level down ... well, jerry wrote: "(circ. 213,000 and we didn't play up. OK, call me a wuss)."

as someone wrote earlier, someone is going to take the hard cut somewhere -- and smaller papers, yes, at some point, you are where you are. but i appreciate jerry's saying that some of the critiques were EDIT just plain rude EDIT, because some of them were ... but that just brings us back to the disconnect that some of the guys are complaining about.

i think a lot of people are taking that 6-6 as the last straw in that disconnect

Another edit/add-on: question -- can "small-time" guys ascend the leadership of APSE, or is it just one officer set aside for the smaller papers and the rest are the big boys?

without venom or rancor,

anonymous internet guy

 

Here's a spitballing idea:

What about keeping the current configuration but giving the under-40s a top 10 plus 10 honorable mentions in the writing categories? Basically double the number of winners.

Just a thought.

 

It's not the writing awards that you're all arguing about, it's the section awards for under 40K.

 

I knew those fucking Royals cheated in the Seventies.