By CELESTE WILLIAMS
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

First things first — the mandatory dates.

Plucked at random from a Nike cap by Jim Jenks and Pat McLoone at the annual Saturday night awards banquet in Philadelphia, the first two mandatory dates for the contest are (drum roll, please): Tuesday, Jan. 27, and Sunday, April 4.

Think: Super Bowl preview stuff and lots of college basketball in the daily section and baseball preview special sections, Final Four coverage and maybe a Masters golf preview or two that Sunday. The final mandatory dates will be chosen Jan. 1 and posted on the APSE Web site and in the contest flyer that is mailed in early January.

Here are some more important dates: The executive committee meeting is at 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 19. At that meeting, contest judging groups will be announced and an opening-night cocktail hour will follow the meeting. Judging begins Sunday morning, Feb. 20, through Wednesday, Feb. 23, at the Torrance Marriott. The hotel room rate is $139, single or double. Judges from smaller newspapers might want to double up to reduce the daily cost to $70, plus tax.

In Philly, the executive committee voted to make permanent two one-year experimental changes. They were:

Using a numerical logging method besides Social Security numbers to identify writing entries.

Doing final writing judging at the winter session. The judging team will continue to pare the finalists to 10, then pass those off to another judging group. Each judge will rank the stories 1-10 and the Contest Committee chairman will tabulate the final results. As was the case in Orlando, the final 1-5 rankings and honorable mentions will be released at a later date.

The one-year experiment of critiques by e-mail will not carry over to the Torrance judging. A special contest sub-committee will look into different critique options, which will be announced in the fall.

Want to be a judge? Have other questions? Look for more information on the contest in the October newsletter.