Category 9: Sports news story
Judge: Hugh Bernreuter, MLive
first place
Alena Visnovsky
Grand rapids cc
Judge Feedback: Excellent, comprehensive story that covered just about every angle and perspective from travel to costs to academics to recruiting to competition. Loved the number and variety of sources. Only complaint would be the number of written quotes instead of quotes from actual interviews. Still, very solid story. Nobody should have questions about the conference realignment after reading this story.
SECOND PLACE
KATHryn Wenske
schoolcraft college
Judge Feedback: Some punctuation mistakes; lede should have been about family and chemistry, with rankings, standings etc. coming later. Good quotes from multiple sources. That's always a big plus! Like that reporter talked to players instead of easier interview with coach. Too much opinion for game story but well written. A good editor could have cleaned it up and made it better.
THIRD PLACE
Pierson VanGorp
GRAND RAPIDS CC
Judge Feedback: No attribution to details of scuffle - who shoved who is in the story, but we don't know where the information is coming from. The video? From a player, coach? Is this from the reporter's perspective? If it's from a video, should say "video replay shows...". Too much reporter opinion, would rather have story about what the investigation discovered and result penalties. This could have been turned into a column where the reporter could have opined freely and described what they saw.
honorable mention
mason Cone
Schoolcraft college
Judge Feedback: Needed editing; first quote had repeated words - 'way better today way better today'. Boring lede; short story; no statistics. Leading hitter? Leader in assists?
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Best stories are always about people - even game stories. Good quotes.
honorable mention
Vincent Khan
delta college
Judge Feedback: Had some punctuation and capitalization mistakes, no quotes. Much too much opinion for a game story; save for a column. Needed some more commas, very short grafs; photos dominated the story.