By DOUG ROBERSON
Newport News (Va.) Daily Press

On the heels of the awards season in Major League Baseball, and as talk of who should win what heats up in all levels of football, sports editors around the country were asked about their awards policies. Do they allow members of their staff to vote for any awards, ranging from Hall of Fame selections to high school all-district teams? If so, do they have any restrictions? If not, why? Do they make any exceptions? Is this a policy the rest of the newspaper follows? Has their reporters' credibility ever been damaged by how they vote or selection? If so, would they mind describing what happened and the result?

Glenn Schwarz, San Francisco Chronicle

My staffers vote for BBWAA awards. I've been a Hall of Fame voter for 25 years, proudly. Chronicle writers vote in the AP polls. Our high school writers put together their own regional all-star teams.

Ronnie Ramos, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Writers are not allowed to vote on any awards. Only exception: columnists can vote on hall of fame awards for the four major sports. The paper does apply to the whole newspaper, though not sure what non-sports polls are out there. We do create our own all star teams for high school sports, and they are branded as the AJC teams.

Jeff Otterbein, Hartford Courant

We vote for such things as the BBWAA awards, Hall of Fame and Heisman. I think there are some organizations that present awards and don't do their homework; ballots are sent to too many people or to people who don't even cover the sport any longer. But the BBWAA system is pretty good. Our beat writers have votes and they obviously follow the game closely. One of them, Dom Amore, who covers the Yankees, says: " As we've talked about in the past, I would like to see our group continue with the awards because we have such a long, rich history with them and, frankly, except for the glitch here and there we do a better, fairer job than anyone. For instance, fan voting got Derek Jeter the Hank Aaron award, which he never should have won. I can see the other side of it, but in practice I just have never seen any significant issue that would suggest a conflict of interest." It would be easier to have a blanket policy – no voting for any awards, and we might someday. For now, I like to look at them individually. For instance, I got a ballot for the Lou Groza award. I politely told the committee that while I follow college football, it is just one of many things I pay attention to, and I don't feel qualified to vote for the award. A few years back I had to make sure the Heisman votes were in the right place.

Randy Harvey, Los Angeles Times

We don't allow our writers or editors to vote on anything that would be considered newsworthy. It is a policy of the newspaper, not just the sports department. We do allow our high school sports reporters to select all-area teams in football and basketball. That makes no news in our area. Nor, as far as know, does it impact the players' peformance bonuses.

Jim Rossow, Champaign News-Gazette

We have no restrictions in place at this time. Our college basketball writer is a Top 25 voter. Our college football writer has a Heisman vote and regularly participates in several other postseason awards. Our high school writers team with coaches to develop All-Area teams in 14 sports. Our only guideline is to make public any vote we have, be it the Wooden Award, the Lombardi Award or an All-Big Ten team. The only conflict occured about 10 years ago. Our longtime columnist, Loren Tate, had a vote in the AP college football Top 25. The race for No. 1 was tight between Notre Dame and Florida State. Uncomfortable because he was unable to watch many games while covering Illinois – and feeling what he thought was pressure from our publisher at the time, someone with strong Notre Dame ties – Tate dropped out as a voter late in the season. We haven't been asked back.

Greg Brownell, The Post-Star (Glen Falls, N.Y.)

We don't have anything major that fits this category, except for our horse racing writer, who is a member of the National Turf Writers Association. He does cast votes for horsey of the year, etc. When I covered the American Hockey League, we were offered a vote for year-end awards. I stopped doing that round 1997 due to conflict of interest concerns. When I became sports editor another person took over the hockey beat, and I left it up to him whether he wanted to vote or not, and he did. I don't think anybody in the minor league is getting bonuses based on these awards, so I don't think it's a big deal. We no longer have a hockey team, so the question is moot. I did keep and enforce a prohibition against in-game awards, such as the Three Stars after a hockey game. I put the kabosh on that years ago when someone in management changed the writers' vote to put a home team guy as first star. We don't have a department or newspaper policy about voting on awards. I think I would strongly consider prohibiting it if we got another pro team. We aren't asked to vote on any scholastic awards around here, except our own Post-Star all-star team. We used to use a panel of coaches for that, but for a variety of reasons, we switch to having the beat writer pick the team.

Mark Faller, The Arizona Republic

We select the All-Arizona prep teams, and our staffers vote for the usual, recognized national awards. We make sure to run their ballots in the paper, and we also make our weekly AP vote available for readers. I understand the argument for not voting, but I don't agree with it. Now more than ever we should leverage our expertise and authority – it's about the only advantage we have left – not throw it away.

David Sell, Colorado Springs Gazette

We don't vote on things such as the AP or Harris polls, hall of fame selections, the Heisman Trophy or other trophies. Basically, I want our folks to report and comment on the news, not make it. If a columnist wants to say that Player X is the best player in college football, he/she can write such a column. He/she doesn't have to vote for the Heisman to do so. Our company sponsors the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame dinner, but we don't participate in choosing the inductees. We choose an all-area team in all the high school sports and we create our own top 10 in several sports. We don't participate in individual league decisions on all-league teams.

Gary Robinson, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.)

Our prep writers meet with writers from across the state to select all-state teams. At first, we weren't especially comfortable with that, but we found that the large area of Memphis/West Tennessee that we cover was getting little or no representation on all-state teams because we weren't involved. We do not go over to campaign for players, just to be involved in the conversation. There have been no credibility issues resulting from our being involved. In fact, the coaches in the area were upset when we weren't attending.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Washington Post

We do not allow our writers to vote for any awards. We finally killed the last dragon when we banned being in the Hall of Fame room this year. The paper-wide policy forbids all instances of a reporter influencing any aspect of news. We just can't have a hand in changing the outcome of something we then report on.

Rusty Hampton, Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

We still vote. The paper does not have a policy on it. Our Ole Miss beat writer is Mississippi's AP football poll voter this fall. Our college writers, columnist and I will vote for the Conerly Trophy, given each year to the top collegiate football player in the state. We vote in other awards, too, and we do create our own rankings, and all-state teams. We pick a Dandy Dozen for football, basketball (boys and girls) and baseball each year. It's our preseason ranking of the state's top 12 players. We chose our own All-State teams in football, basketball (boys and girls), baseball and track. We pick a player of the year in each, too. Every year we receive complaints – mainly from parents, but sometimes from other readers and coaches – about the Dandy Dozen and All-State teams. As far as I know, our credibility has not been damaged.

Tom Bergeron, The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.)

Pro awards: Our writers are allowed to vote for major awards – and we disclose it to the readers. This year, we had an AL MVP vote and told readers that we selected Morneau not Jeter. In fact, we listed the first-place votes for all media outlets. HS awards: We select all of our own HS honors, up to as many as 5,000 selections per season. We select all-state, all-group (size), all-region and all-county, three teams each. It's more than 1,000 selections for cross-country alone. We do not participate in AP honors nor do we run coach picks. Since we have been doing it so long in so many sports, we are regarded as the source for honors teams. We tell readers that these are our picks and say they have been made by the writer (or a team of writers) based on personal observation and conversation with coaches, players and sport officials. When our final football top 20 state champ was a close race, we listed the top three selections from all 20 voters. Are there compliants? Stunningly, there are only about a dozen each season. Most of the time we explain picks are subjective. When we have clearly erred (such as naming the wrong sibling or merely overlooking an athelete at one of the 350 schools we are trying to cover), we will make adjustments to our on-line site, adding an additional name where it will be archived forever. We never take a kid off a team.

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