Congrats to APSE writing winners

Re: Posting the stories honored by APSE.

They should definitely do that on the Web site. But as an interim step:

It would be nice if there were a one-line description with each honoree right from the start, when APSE announces the top 10. For example, it could say: Michael Rosenberg (Detroit Free Press), for his feature on Tom Izzo's off-season spent in the Antarctic.

 

Yes, clearly, it's much more competitive to compete against a bunch of newspaper writers, 99.9 percent of whom are working with serious limitations on time and space than, say, against the best magazine feature writers in the world who are hamstrung by neither.

 

Not a bad idea. That way resourceful journalists could seek the stories out themselves.

 

Yeah. Without even a guess as to the topic, there's no way to find those pieces with a simple archive search. I did end up contacting some of the papers in my friend's category last year, and all were happy to either provide a link or cut-and-paste a copy to me. But if the goal is to showcase the best work of APSE members, you'd think they'd want to, you know, actually make it available?

 

Under those conditions, BASW eliminates a huge percentage of the possible pool right off the bat.

I have seen some stories win APSE and wondered why, and I usually enjoy the BASW books with a couple of exceptions. But . . . Isn't it tougher to produce quality work with those limitations you mentioned?

It's not as if the 0.1 percent of newspaper writers without space or time concerns are the ones winning all the awards. And there are a lot more newspaper journalists than there are magazine writers who work without boundaries.

 

Magazine writers have boundaries, too. Word counts and such. And being allowed to be expansive doesn't make it any less challenging. The idea that it's somehow easier to produce a lengthy magazine piece than a short newspaper story is pretty ludicrous. They both have their distinct challenges.

 

Very true, Waylon, re: the relative difficulty.

I stand corrected.

 

No problem. I just think it's a pointless debate - like the one that pops up here all the time about which is tougher, covering news or sports.

A few weeks ago, I remember someone surmising that they could write a magazine takeout a la Jones or Gary Smith. It's just like writing 10 newspaper stories, right? And he does that every week!

But it's not even close to the same ...

 

All due respect to the fine people who places in the Top 5 in, say, feature writing, but the competition for that category is each other, not Chris Jones, Charlie Pierce, Michael Lewis, J.R. Moeringer, S.L. Price, Gary Smith, etc. I'm not saying that there aren't talented people writing features in newspapers. But in general, when they are as talented as those people mentioned, they don't stay in newspapers very long. If people want to be annoyed that Glenn Stout has too much power or whatever, that's an opinion you can certainly have. But I'm sort of annoyed by the argument that "It's always the same writers, every year, no one from newspapers ever makes it in." (Um, because it's really hard to write a newspaper story that's on par with something Pierce or Junod or Lewis is doing?) One time a year or so ago here, someone was bitching about BASW and they whined, "It's such a joke. Sally Jenkins makes in every year." I went to the BASW website and pointed out that, in fact, Jenkins had never made it in the series. This was met with silence. Lot of complaining about the series comes from people who don't actually read the books.

I'm happy for the APSEs I've won, but I don't kid myself by thinking they came in competition against the Michael Jordans of sports writing.

 

Rhetorical (or not) question:

How many writers were on last year's list, or the last few years', but are not on this year's list -- not necessarily because they were beaten out, but because they are now OUT OF THE BUSINESS?

Also, Lynn Hoppes, since he's reading this site to see if people are talking about him -- how about APSE getting those winning stories up? (And last year's winners first -- you should have them.)

EDIT: I apologize, the above was kind of a rude way to put it to Lynn. Sorry. But since he is reading this site, how about it?

 

I won three in a row then got laid off.

Just sayin'

Congrats to the winners anyway.

 

I was looking at the list and saw several folks who've left newspapers, some voluntarily, some involuntarily, since they submitted their entries. It made me sad.