APSE judging thread

I've heard people say our design was one of the best in our ownership group.

Still, no APSE sniffs amid the five competitions we enter.

 

Having judged, I've never heard ANYBODY say "you vote for me, I'll vote for you." And I've never seen a really good paper not win. To finish in the top 20 is terrific. If you never finish in the top 20, and never get a sniff, don't mope. Make your paper better. It's as simple as that.

Quitting the contest is like quitting Little League because you can't hit.

 

I judged quite a few times. I'd be lying if I said that there weren't some papers that got extra consideration, subconsciously or whatever. Nothing overt, more "benefit of the doubt." It's mostly in the section judging: "If it's the Big Time Press, how can it not be Top 20."

And despite the "anonymity," there are certainly columnists whose style and/or location made it pretty clear who they were, and that probably factored into the thinking of some judges, too.

That said, I think the vast majority of the APSE judges are diligent and do their very best to get it right. There's just human nature involved, nothing you can do about that.

And no, I've never seen or heard of a single instance of any kind of bartering between judges.

 

I know Frank_R has hit on this point before, and I absolutely agree with it.

Newsrooms have gotten so sterile in recent years, and a big reason is because there is so little interaction between people and between departments.

If editors and/or designers were allowed to work from home -- and the technology is certainly available to do that right now, effective immediately -- it would decrease that interaction even further.

And I don't see how that can be a good thing.

 

I can only add: ditto.

 

See, that's amazing to me, and it really shouldn't be allowed, I don't think. Have a staff meeting for everybody to meet or something ...

 

It would help if someone can direct me to a link of a newspaper that has three full-time staff (one SE, two writers), circulation under 20,000, 22 high schools, five colleges and five counties to work with and has won APSE awards. We could ask them about their approach to coverage, what they focus on and what they give up.

Otherwise, I think SF's commentary just sealed the deal for our staff; given the existing sentiment,that I'll make a printout of it and share it when we convene for the final time to consider dropping the annual APSE fee from our budget.

 

I'd just be interested to know how many papers won whose editors don't usually attend the conferences, especially among the smaller papers.

 

Ours didn't - and can't - unless it's vacation time. They won't allow time off for such trips.

 

So we've covered the Triple Crown winners. What about the opposite: which are the biggest papers shut out of all three overall categories?

 

The rags that didn't send judges?