Times Wins APSE Award for Writing

For the third consecutive year, Times sportswriters have won first place in the writing portion of the national Associated Press Sports Editors’ contest. In this year’s results, announced Monday, Greg Sandoval and Maryann Hudson teamed to take first in the news category, for papers of 175,000 circulation and higher.

The winning story was about a class at USC that was attended primarily by athletes, two of whom told The Times that they received their grades without having gone to class or done any work. All but a few in the class, later canceled by the university, received A’s. A recently completed Pac-10 investigation, prompted by the story, cleared USC of any wrongdoing.

The Times also placed in two other writing categories, taking a second with a team that included Sandoval and 12 other reporters in investigative reporting for a series of stories on Jim Harrick’s troubles and eventual firing at UCLA. Others on that project were Lisa Dillman, George Dohrmann, Chris Dufresne, Bill Dwyre, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Jim Hodges, Tim Kawakami, Jason Reid, Eric Shepard, Paul Singleton, Steve Springer and Larry Stewart.

Columnist Bill Plaschke placed fourth in feature writing for his story on former tennis star Andrea Jaeger.

Dufresne had won in event writing in 1994 and Plaschke had teamed with Elliott Almond to win in news in 1995.

Bill Shaikin of the Riverside Press-Enterprise won in the game-story category and was fourth in features for papers of 50,000-175,000 circulation. Bob Keisser of the Long Beach Press-Telegram was fourth in enterprise reporting in the same circulation category.

For papers circulating 50,000 copies or fewer, Bill Plunkett of the Palm Springs Desert Sun took first in the event category.