LEBANON, Tenn. – Brian T. Smith, a Bristol Herald Courier sports writer, won first place for best investigative/series in competition against writers from Tennessee’s largest newspapers.
In addition, BHC sports writer Allen Gregory won second place in the outdoors writing category in the 2007-08 sports section and writing contest sponsored by the Tennessee Sports Writers Association.
The results were released Friday at the group’s annual convention in Lebanon.
Smith’s winning investigation, which finished ahead of two projects by the Knoxville News Sentinel, dealt with the ramifications of East Tennessee State University’s 2003 decision to drop football.
“Outstanding piece of restrained, focused writing on the anguish and backlash of [ETSU’s] empty void of not having a football program,” the judges concluded. “Filled with perspective, history, and every one of the quotes from the 25 people in this series of stories made the reader sense the frustration.”
Smith joined the BHC in October from the Vancouver (Wash.) Columbian. His series, nine stories over three days in a package titled “ETSU’s fall from football,” was a national finalist earlier this year in the projects category in the Associated Press Sports Editor’s contest, the most prestigious competition in the country for sports writers.
“The most remarkable aspect of Brian’s series was that it was published barely two months into his tenure here,” said J. Todd Foster, BHC managing editor. “Brian reported this series while covering high school and Emory & Henry College football.
“His work showed that ETSU’s athletic program has largely fallen into irrelevance and that ETSU squandered numerous opportunities, including the real possibility of becoming the summer home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans,” Foster said. “To win over entries from Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga is a tremendous achievement for which all of us here are proud.”
The Tennessee Sports Writers Association also inducted three new members into the TSWA Hall of Fame; they were Bobby Hall, Claude “Blinkey” Horn and Ted Riggs.
Hall worked for almost 40 years as a writer for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis.
Horn was sports editor of The Nashville Tennessean following Grantland Rice and developed the concept of a state high school basketball tournament and prompted the newspaper to sponsor the state tournament from 1921 until 1929.
Riggs worked for United Press International in 1952 and then joined the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1953.
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