APSE | Associated Press Sports Editors

The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., got tired of being scooped by the competition on its biggest high school production.

The newspaper has been picking a "Dandy Dozen" in football, basketball and baseball for the past 20 years. It's a preseason list of what the paper considers the top 12 high school players in Mississippi.

Thirteen years ago the newspaper brought the football players to Jackson for a photo shoot and lunch.

"We would tell the players several weeks in advance so they can plan to make it to the photo shoot, but then they'd tell their parents and all these recruiting gurus and before you knew it, the 'Dandy Dozen' was being announced on Rivals and Scout instead of The Clarion-Ledger or clarionledger.com," said sports editor Rusty Hampton.

Hampton decided this year to announce the 12 players daily on the Web site from July 8-19. "We picked the team, then each day at noon we'd announce a new player," said Hampton. "The players found out the same way the readers did, by checking clarionledger.com. We wrote short stories online and then followed it up the next day with a longer story in print. It was very popular, drew about 10,000 hits per day to our Web site in a time that's normally very slow for high school sports on the site. We had the photo shoot last week and put together a 'Dandy Dozen' package for Sunday, in print and online."

The newspaper also did video interviews with each of players, plus a "making of the Dandy Dozen video."

Taking a cue from Matt Pepin at the Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald-Record, the News Sentinel in Knoxville wanted to be a little more hip with high school students.

The idea was to find someone to record a song in a studio for its high school coverage and also produce a video. Pepin's rap song and video has been a success at varsity845.com with students downloading the MP3 or adding to your iPod and schools playing the song at halftime of football games.

The newspaper located local rapper B.T., who agreed to due the song and no charge in exchange for the publicity and future opportunities it would present.

The newspaper paid for the studio time and the online department videotaped the making of the song. After two takes the song was done and less than a week the video was produced.

It's too early to know what kind of success the song and video will have with the start of football still weeks away.

The song/video also will help will the redesign of the PrepXtra logo and prepxtra.com.

Bobby Hall, who worked for The Commercial Appeal for almost 40 years before retiring in 2001, was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Writers Hall of Fame.

Hall, along with the late Claude 'Blinkey' Horn of The Tennessean and the late Ted Riggs of the Knoxville News Sentinel, were honored July 10 at Cumberland University in Lebanon.

While at The Commercial Appeal, Hall covered everything from the University of Memphis to Ole Miss to Tennessee. He eventually specialized in golf, where he became one of the South's top golf writers.

He won numerous awards for his coverage of The Masters, U.S. Open, PGA Championship and FedEx St. Jude Classic. He was known for his intense preparation, detailed reporting and knack of finding the unusual angle.

"I'm honored – and humbled – to be selected as an inductee," said Hall, 64, who's now a senior contributor to Mid-South Golfer magazine, while continuing his usual diet of golfing, running and coaching a women's adult softball team. "Certainly, I never expected anything like this. It's definitely not something a person sets out to achieve as a career goal, but it's extremely gratifying when it happens.

"Mainly, I just enjoyed covering sports, and I tried to do the best job I could do – and be as thorough and fair and credible as I possibly could. I was fortunate to get a lot of good assignments through the years, and I'm very appreciative of the opportunities I was given."

The Commercial Appeal again swept the three highest honors in the 21st annual Tennessee Sports Writers Association writing awards.

The Commercial Appeal won seven awards in Division 1 (newspapers with a circulation of 20,000 or more), including five firsts, highlighted by victories as the best daily section, best special section and Writer of the Year. Judging was done by writers and editors from around the country.

Staff writer Ron Higgins won five awards, including three first places and two seconds.

Higgins won the Gary Lundy Writer of the Year award, given to the state's top writer, for an unprecedented fifth consecutive year and for the seventh time in his career. His winning stories included features on Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive and pro boxer Jermain Taylor and a column featuring the overnight hiring of new Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino.

John Adams was named best columnist, Mike Strange was first in event writing, Roland Julian was first in headline writing, Bob Hodge was first in outdoor writing, and David Goddard was first in layout.

For the fourth straight year and eighth time in nine years, The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro was named best daily section for Division II.

The newspaper also earned first place for best special section, best feature writer (Adam Sparks), best event writer (Roger Garfield), best prep writer (Garfield) and best individual layout (Corby Yarbrough).

At the APSE convention in Minneapolis, the editors from the southeast region in attendance agreed to hold a region meeting on Monday, April 20 in Atlanta and hopefully at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The workshop will again focus on how to improve coverage on the Internet.

Phil Kaplan is the chair of the Southeast Region. You can reach him at (865) 342-6285 or via e-mail at kaplan@knews.com.

AUGUST 2008 NEWSLETTER STORIES

• Northwest Region report (8/29)

• Leitch: Don't be afraid of Web hits, they pay the bills (8/28)

• Carrig: A small paper with big ideas (8/27)

• Football stats made easy (8/26)

• Great Plains Region report (8/25)

• LLWS: Every Sports Editor's nightmare doesn't have to be if you follow these tips (8/23)

• Writing short – and good – high school game stories is still possible (8/22)