This writing comes to you from Vegas, but it’s not what you think. It’s not so much fun and rec as it is work. The Associated Press Sports Editors winter convention is here. It’s where the annual national contest judging is happening for writing and sections, and there are 70 sports editors from around the country here. They bill it as the hardest work you’ll ever love. I made it here because someone else dropped out and they were looking for a volunteer. I raised my hand. I’ve done this twice before, once on the small-paper program where they bring you in and pay for it, and once on my own when it was in Southern Cal. This one they pick up.
I consider it a professional development opportunity. I touched down late Saturday afternoon and was in a two-hour orientation meeting within an hour. Met my judging teammates from San Diego and Glen Falls, N.Y., my roommate from very southern Texas and visited with a few others I’ve come to know over the years.
The judging started at 9 Sunday morning. Our team had game stories from papers of 250,000 circulation and up, the largest circ category. There was some good stuff, as you can imagine, and some stuff that frankly wasn’t much different than what we at the 28,000 or so circ MT do. We read 100 stories (ok, 99 to be exact), graded them and came out with 13 that made the cut. Then we thinned three out for our top 10. Then we ranked them 1 through 10, and turned them over to the contest committee. Another group will read the finalists and apply their own votes to determine the winning order.
We had a lot of Olympics stories, U.S. Open golf stories, pro sports, college sports, the death of a prep football player and the big dog show. It was interesting to see how different writers approached the same stories, and it was difficult ranking them. I had a top three I felt pretty strongly about but it wasn’t easy rating them. You do the best you can and move on.
It’s almost noon Monday and we spent the morning going over special sections for 40,000 to 100,000 circ. … OK, now it’s later, just had a box lunch. Saw a lot of football tabs and will see more throughout the afternoon. There’s innovative work in there — ideas definitely worth stealing — including a strong fishing section I should show our own Fishman. I’ve done my first third and now it’s off to do the rest.
