Congrats to APSE writing winners

I imagine it will be no different this time next year.

As for RHCP: Congrats on your award. Enjoy it and move on. Continue doing great work, and you'll probably win another award.

Personally, I'm right down the middle about awards. They're nice, but I know a lot of times it's about being in the right place at the right time. I've won awards for some stories that weren't even close to my best stuff, but I won largely because of the subject matter and timing.

I don't think awards are everything - but I certainly don't think they are meaningless.

 

I've made it 10 years in this business without ever having won a single award.

 

There are about 30 paper-specific stories on a Google news search:

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22Associated+Press+Sports+Editors%22

 

No, we don't.
Our family of papers does, but I don't think anyone enters, although I'd have only one story I've done for our dailies that I would think of entering.

Are there national weekly paper awards?

 

Congrats!

 

Dejan covers the shit out the Pirates, between daily stuff, blog, chat, Q&A, reader interaction via story/blog comments. He MAKES the Pirates interesting because he doesn't treat covering them like it's a bum beat.

He'd kill it if he was covering Duquesne basketball or arena football or the Olympics (he already has done that). He uses nothing as a crutch. You make what you want out of your beat, and he'd be the first to tell you it's a lot better being No. 1 covering the Pirates than backup to the Penguins, no matter how good the teams are.

Hopefully, there will always be a place in this profession for guys like Dejan, although I think it's already been proven that nothing is guaranteed. Congrats to him on his well-deserved awards.

 

I've long argued that any beat can, and should, be treated this way. It is how I've always treated mine, no matter what beats they were.

Sometimes, though, no matter what you do, your beat is seen in a certain light, only, and that's it. It won't be allowed to be taken any farther, or treated any better, by anyone other than you. And doing too much on something deemed by others as not worth it may not get you anywhere.

Dejan's case is a little different, just because it is the Pirates and major-league baseball, at least. But, for anything else, I think my point stands. Unfortunately.