Best of SD 2007: Category Winners

Let the Best of SD voting begin! We'll close the voting on April 9. Like last year, you're limited to one vote per IP address, in hopes of keeping ballots from being stuffed.

This will serve as the catchall link to winners and details in the Best of Sports Design 2007. First up are the category winners:

WINNERS AND EDITOR'S CHOICE VOTING
Infographics
Breaking News Inside Pages
Breaking News Covers
Redesigns
Cover Design With Ads
Live Game Inside Pages
Enterprise/Feature Centerpiece
Posters/Photo Pages
Special Section/Enterprise Inside Pages
Special Coverage
Live Game Covers
Special Section Covers
WINNERS ONLY
Multimedia
College Designer
College Pages

Follow the jump for some frequently-asked questions about the Best of Sports Design 2007.

So, technically, nobody has asked any of these questions. But why let the facts get in the way of a good phrase? Below are some of the pertinent details about the Best of Sports Design 2007.

How many entries did we have, total?
776

And how many winners did we have, total?
68, counting those in the non-voting categories

What were the largest categories?
Special Section Covers (124) and Live Game Covers (99) led the way.

Who had the most winners?
In the 12 Editor's Choice Categories, the winners' breakdown is as follows:
T1. Boston Globe, Omaha World-Herald, Washington Post, Buffalo News — 8
5. LA Times — 7
6. NY Times — 3
T7. San Jose, Dallas, Columbus, Arizona Republic, Denver Post, Cleveland, — 2
T14 -- Miami, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Kansas City, Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis — 1

So, um, eight finalists for Omaha? you clearly rigged this contest.
(Also known as the "how the contest worked: question)
Nice try. Here's how the contest worked:

Entries were submitted to me at the SportsDesigner e-mail address. Rich and I both had access to all the entries.

I placed the entries, with names and papers attached to them, in their respective categories. The entries would look something like this:

Joe Smith and Jane Doe, Happyville Times, State Championship (link to jpeg or PDF here)

After that was done, I had someone else take all the names and papers off of each entry and assign a unique ID to each one, leaving only the ID and link. So that, in Live Game Covers, the above entry would now look like this:

LGC1: (link to jpeg or PDF here)

Care was taken to separate entries from the same paper, so that panelists wouldn't see the same work in succession.

After that was done to all the entries, ballots in each category were e-mailed out to each panelist.

Each category had a different set of panelists. No two panels were the same.

Panelists each ranked their top pages in each category (they may have ranked as few as 3 in the smallest categories and as many as 15 in the large Live Game Covers and Special Section Covers categories).

After the votes were in, we calculated winners using the same type of formula you'd see in a common AP poll: First place got 10 points, Second 9, Third 8, etc. (depending of course on category size and how many entries were ranked).

We then totaled up the points and averaged them, and the entries whose votes fell within (or very close to) the top seven percent in each category were named winners.

 

It was only at this point, after the winners were entered and final, that we went back and put the names and papers back with their entry IDs.

OK. But you still didn't explain the part about keeping conflicts of interest out of the voting.
Ah. Well, that's why we used an average instead of total points.

Panelists were not allowed to vote on their own papers or direct competitors. They were also empowered to decide if they had any other conflicts of interest they could not vote on.

If a panelist had a conflict of interest, that was noted and it did not count against that entry's average.

Each category had either six or seven panelists. So if there was a conflict, the conflicting vote would simply be left out when an entry was averaged. Say there were seven panelists. Most entries would averaged based on seven votes. But in a case of a conflict, an entry would be averaged based on six votes.

Unlike SND, we're not set up to simply have a conflict judge, so instead we have more judges per category and use an average instead of cumulative total to determine winners.

Was there a limit to entries a paper could submit?
No. But this is very important — There is NO correlation between the number of entries per paper and the number of winners that paper got. Some papers had more than 50 entries and did not win in any category, and a few papers that picked up 7-8 winners barely entered 10. In my opinion, that's a good thing.

Who were the panelists?
In no particular order, panelists this year were: Josh Crutchmer, Rich Boudet, Dave Elsesser, Tim Parks, Rob Schneider, Steve Cavendish, Matt Erickson, Derek Simmons, Michael Whitley, Vince Chiaramonte, Toby Carrig, Nate Billings, Nicole Bogdas, Scott Minister, Keeli Garza, Andrew Braford, Cindy Lacy, Chris Courtney, Mark Koenig, Joey Kirk, Luke Knox, Ben Meyers, John V. Smith, Josh Trudell, Jon Wile, Mike Strain, Mark McTyre, Harrison Goodman, Jolene Ross, Paul Wallen, Bill Bootz, Emmet Smith, Phill Spiker.

Each panelist was assigned to at two categories, with a few getting more than that either from the beginning or if we needed help late in the process when others would find themselves busy or logistically prevented from voting in a certain category.

Did you have any concerns with the contest this year?
It outgrew me this year, and next year, we're going to have to alter it somehow, particularly the process of entering. We need to be able to submit entries via the Web, including names and jpeg/pdf attachments, and have them uploaded to the correct database for each category. If anyone knows how to do this, I'd appreciate the help.

What about the small papers? You said the small papers would be recognized this year. Liar.
Over the course of the voting, I plan to note the highest-finishing small-paper entry and international entry in each category, where applicable. I'd hoped that we'd get enough entries fitting those two descriptions to separate them out in each category, but this year we did not.

You're an idiot. This contest is stupid. These winners are crap.
Yes. No. And no. But at the end of the day, this is still a site to discuss and learn, so if you have praise or criticisms, let them fly. We'll be doing this again next year (though not during March Madness).

When will Editor's Choice winners be announced?
The voting will close on April 9, and the winners will very slowly be revealed over the course of the following week, culminating with the Sports Designer of the Year announcement at the end of it all.

Sssssshhhhh. Be quiet. I'm visiting the InDesign Library.
(Sound of trumpets and drums)