Merrill Students Attend APSE Convention
Merrill College graduate student Chris Melville and rising sophomore Kofi Yeboah attended the 2014 Associated Press Sports Editors Conference in Arlington, Va. Below they write about their experiences.
From Chris:
Wednesday, June 25
So I was lost.
Those direction apps never work. Besides, save a third-grade field trip and a thousand-mile pilgrimage from sandy Florida to Beantown, I’d never been to Virginia. Just a bunch of Wahoos, Hokies and Jeffersonians, I imagined. Whether the concierge yelling into his phone — “EADS STREET, IT’S EADS STREET” — to fight my waning signal fell under any of those categories wouldn’t come to light. But the patient escort led me to water, the 41st annual Associated Press Sports Editors’ Summer Conference, and as I climbed the stairs of the Crystal Gateway Marriott, to crab cakes.
The student reception had overflowed the room. Some 20 undergrads and grads filled a space that a year before would have dealt with six. Student participation had been buoyed, I was told, by the proximity to a collegiate metro area and the introduction of APSE student chapters. Maryland and Virginia Tech were the first, but Tim Stephens, APSE president and CBSSports.com managing editor, expected dozens to follow. Though heavy on the Terps, inspiring Dan Brown phrases such as “Maryland Illuminati,” I met good ol’ boys from Georgia, Nittany Lions from Happy Valley and a self-starter whose app had hooked millions of unique visitors.
We scurried to the evening’s reception, open and borderless, titans of legacy media sharing Malibu shrimp with students. Name badges shortened the Q-and-A, giving time to focus on editors’ needs from interns, their digital transitions, their city’s premier gastropubs. I first sat with the Micco family: Jerry, an editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and his wife, Cindy, a tenured editor from Maryland. Wouldn’t you know it — just as JOUR201 taught you, it’s all about the story.
Thursday, June 26
Convinced Wednesday night’s smooth return meant I was Magellan, I bolted from class, flew down the hill, perspired past the “M” and caught the train for Day Two. Self-guided, thank you. I hit town in time to see Sally Jenkins and Bryan Curtis grab their seats at the podium for a discussion on the reemergence of longform journalism.
Twitter’s boon and longform’s revival shouldn’t have coexisted. How had sports writing gotten longer and shorter at the same time? In my most anticipated panel – “The rebirth of long form” – Curtis, of Grantland, simplified things for me. New was old, today’s personal voice an imitation of “those SI guys” in the ’60s, Curtis said. Jenkins, daughter of Dan Jenkins and columnist at The Washington Post testified his thoughts.
“What’s changed is the pipe, not what’s in the pipe,” said Jenkins.
And of course, in unison this time, it’s still about telling great stories.
The panels were through, but I wasn’t. A caucus for small-circulation newspapers — less than 40,000 — had space for me, though they asked a large-paper affiliate to excuse himself. Tommy Deas, APSE second vice president, and Oscar Dixon, AP assistant sports editor for the South region, headed the conversation. Dixon encouraged the room to chat — what worked, what didn’t, what isn’t your wire service providing. A new format had changed Major League Baseball gamers and editors were unsure of some details. It was a real communal gathering.
The day was finished and I was out of there.
Friday, June 27
The sun resumed its scheduled beaming and school was back in session.
Ted Bridis runs the AP’s national investigative team in Washington. From 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., a few cups of coffee already in, I’d wager, Bridis ran the “Public records and database reporting” session by himself, with insight to spare. He prefaced the information with a call it to action — “[database reporting] distinguishes your reporting from lazier competition” — and tackled open-record laws, forming a perfect request and how journalists might be entitled to expedited processing. A room of furiously scribbling note-takers reminded me of home.
The pads went away and the artfully folded napkins came out for the Red Smith Award Luncheon. As a testament to the editors attending, no quicker did I dress my salad then was my table roasted for being student-exclusive. Weren’t we there to meet employers? Though our hands had touched the table bread and it was too late to fix our rookie mistake, Jim Luttrell of The New York Times joined us for dessert. Wendell Smith’s posthumous recognition (42 years after his death), delivered by Larry Lester, followed and was unwavering, as Smith would’ve liked it.
Pork and sweet potatoes in tow, I headed back up for an NFL coverage workshop. Glen Crevier, from the Star Tribune, Matt Pepin, BostonGlobe.com, Scott Monserud, The Denver Post, and Lisa Wilson from The Buffalo News compared pregame, live and postgame commonalities. Immediate postgame grades were all the rage. Pregame Q-and-A’s with opponent writers had also brought readers and provided them with another lens. They were a group focused on digital that several times mentioned burying the traditional game story. The Seattle Times’ sports editor, Don Shelton, had been “trying for 20 years” - a thoughtful way to end my time here.
From Kofie
The 2014 APSE conference was a great experience for a young journalist like me.
There, I was able to meet sports editors from the big publications like the L.A. Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. However, I also was able to meet with people from other corners of America such as Wyoming and Alabama.
What made the conference valuable was that everybody was able to talk to people without judging them. Big publications and small publications got along extremely well. An editor of the Chicago Tribune told me that the reason for this is that “At the end of the day, we all have the same problems.”
The conference sessions were also insightful.
In the multimedia forum, I learned tools like how to make a GIF using Photoshop. Social media guru Tim McGarry showed about 25 conference members how to take piece of video and turn it into a GIF, which stands for graphics interchanged format.
In other sessions, I was able to learn about social media managing and attracting readership. Even though I am just starting out in journalism, I will take what I have learned from these knowledgeable editors and apply it to my recruiting website.
However, what I take away from the conference are conversations with the bright students with whom I was able to connect. Students from Georgia, Howard University and Ithaca, New York, were good people with whom to discuss how job-ready we were.
Also I am excited to become the first student liaison of one of the first-ever APSE student chapters. I can’t wait for all of the new opportunities that await and the doors that will be unlocked for students through APSE.
This APSE experience was a great one, and I can’t wait to attend more.
