Kansas City Star’s digital sports coverage on kansascity.com and via The Star’s mobile app earned national recognition in the Associated Press Sports Editors’ (APSE) annual contest this week.
In addition, five KC Star/Wichita Eagle sportswriters — Star columnists Sam McDowell and Vahe Gregorian and reporters Jesse Newell, Kellis Robinett and Taylor Eldridge — were individually honored by sports editors and writers from across the nation.
Also recognized as among the best in its class was the special section of The Star that previewed the 2022 Kansas City Chiefs season.
The APSE Annual Awards are sports journalism’s version of the Emmys.
McDowell has spent the better part of the past year in a sports columnist role after covering Chiefs pace, Sporting KC and high school sports for The Star. His Top 10-winning four-part sports column entry for 2022 included the following pieces:
Gregorian earned two Top 10 awards in the APSE competition: one for writing a feature film (over 1,500 words) and one for writing a short film (under 1,500 words). Here are the links to those stories:
Newell, who just completed his first season at the pace of the Chiefs after an illustrious run at the KU Jayhawks, scored a prestigious Top 10 in Explanatory Writing for his piece titled “Do it, Kels!”: How the Forced Audible overtime by Patrick Mahomes in The Chiefs Conquer the Bills.
K-State writer Kellis Robinett, who writes for both The Star and Eagle, earned a Top 10 in Long Feature for her story titled, New Kansas State Coach Jerome Tang is the Ultimate Self-Made man in college basketball.
Ed Eldridge, who covers athletics for the Wichita State Shockers, took home two Top 10s: one for Feature – “Count Your Blessings”: Former Shocker DJ Bowles grateful for second chance at life – and one for Beat Writing, a voice composed of five parts:
For The Star’s Collective Top 10 Award in the Digital category, entrants were judged, according to competition guidelines published by the APSE, “on how well your staff uses digital tools, in and around outside of the platform, to tell stories and engage readers. What do you do digitally for your readers and what can your staff accomplish in their most creative form?
Seeking to meet and engage readers in a growing variety of dynamic digital environments, The Star is now in its third calendar year offering readers a daily morning sports edition alongside the standard desktop site, app and rerun edition of the paper printed of the day.
The Wichita Eagle also ranked in the top 10 in the Print Portfolio category for press coverage via its daily and Sunday editions.
All 2022 APSE awards will be presented during the organization’s annual summer conference, which this year will be held in Indianapolis June 15-18.
