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Web
coverage
of the 2006
conference
Thanks to our
conference sponsors!
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SPECIAL
COVERAGE
Conference sights and
sounds
Speaker handouts, etc.
ACES conference blog
PRIMARY COVERAGE
2006 conference home
page
Opening general session
Scholarship winners
Election
"Dealing with Disaster"
Headline contest
Robinson Prize
Auction
Banquet
Closing session
Fat Fish Blue
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| A set
of New Orleans Times-Picayune front pages from the days following
Hurricane Katrina went to Don Podesta of the Washington Post for $550 . |
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Having fun and helping out
Bidders found just what they were looking for
in the ACES silent and live auctions
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By Gerri Berendzen
Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader copy chief Brian Throckmorton
walked out of the ACES silent auction Friday night as the winner
of "a major award."
Or maybe it was a plastic leg lamp, complete with fishnet stocking.
But the real winner Friday was the ACES Education Fund, which
benefited from the proceeds of one of the most eclectic silent
auctions in the American Copy Editors Society's 10-year history.
Whether people were jealous of Throckmorton's purchased award
is unclear. What is clear is that many ACES members were willing
to open their checkbooks to help out.
Spirited bidding for silent-auction items ranging from a print
of the Sex Pistols to a bottle of Sass Pinot Noir, and from the
"Christmas Story"-inspired leg lamp to a set of 2005 World Series
tickets for the Cleveland Indians, helped raise $4,950.96 for
the Education Fund coffers.
Later in the evening, the bidding started again at a live auction
held after the banquet keynote speech, this time raising $3,075
to help the New Orleans Times-Picayune Hurricane Relief Fund.
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| Copy chief Paula Devlin
of the New Orleans Times-Picayune models a Times-Picayune "come
hell or high water" T-shirt autographed by members of her desk. Four of
the shirts sold for $975 during live bidding Friday night at the ACES banquet.
The live auction raised money for hurricane relief. |
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ACES auctionmeister Scott Toole, news editor of the Express-Times in Easton,
Pa., urged ACES members to "bid with your hearts and not with
your heads."
He took that to heart, bidding $225 for a Times-Picayune "Come
Hell or High Water" T-shirt autographed by the members of the
T-P copy desk.
Don Podesta of the Washington Post helped out with a $550 winning
bid for a complete set of Times-Picayune front page prints from
the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina.
Others who helped the Hurricane Relief Fund with winning live
auction bids were Sara Hendricks of the Victoria (Texas) Advocate
($150 for a set of autographed Katrina photographs), Melissa
McCoy of the Los Angeles Times ($500 for tuition to the API News
Editors and Copy Chiefs seminar and $275 for a T-P autographed T-shirt),
Mary Gladstone of Religion Link ($150 for the book "One Dead
in the Attic"), Rebecca Dyer of Tribune Newspapers in Mesa, Ariz.
($250 for a T-P autographed T-shirt), Neil Holdway of the Daily
Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill.,($225 for a T-P T-shirt), ACES
co-founder Hank Glamann ($125 for a Cleveland Plain Dealer toy bicycle and
$225 for a Beatles print) and Daniel Hunt of the Press Democrat
in Santa Rosa, Calif. ($100 for a Beatles print).
At the silent auction, things got off to a quick start when
Melissa Spirek of Bowling Green State University came into the
auction room and signed her name to any newspaper-related items
being offered.
Spirek was hoping to bring home a few goodies for her own silent
auction, conducted for journalism students at her university.
Her plans to "re-auction" for education's sake dovetailed nicely
with ACES goal of raising money for its Education Fund.
Tammy Yates of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and Kathy
Schenck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also helped out with
lively bidding for a print of the Sex Pistols.
"We're probably the last two people at this convention who look
like Sex Pistols fans," Yates said.
After Yates got the print up to $80, Schneck slipped behind
her and upped the price to $85. But she knew the bidding wasn't
done.
"Tammy will be back," Schenck said.
She was right. Yates finally came in with the winning bid of
$90.
But that didn't match the highest winning bid of the night,
$120 by the New York Times‚ Merrill Perlman for the bottle of
Sass wine. Liz McGehee of the Washington Post was close behind
with a $110 bid for a Beatles print.
But whether the bid was $5 or $120, people were having fun stalking
out their item while helping out ACES.
"I bid $4 on the Crawford, Texas, pocketknife," said TV Week's
Jenny Butler. "Then someone came up behind me and bid $20. I
think I‚m going to wait around and bid $21 at the last minute
-- a little bid sniping like you do on eBay."
The auction once again got rave reviews.
"All I can say is 'wow,' " Patricia Cole of the Washington Times
told Toole as he prepared to count down the last seconds of the
auction.
With five minutes left and the tension mounting, Toole called
out "no elbowing, no pushing, no punching." Someone yelled "Right,
Merrill" as the silent auction came to a close.
Gerri Berendzen is copy desk chief of the Quincy (Ill.) Herald-Whig.
She can be reached at gberendzen@whig.com. |
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| Melissa Spirek, a Bowling
Green State University professor, places her bid. |
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| Bill Walsh (Washington Post),
center, chats with Bill Fink and Jennifer Johnson, both of
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. |
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| Browsing through the books
at the silent auction are, from left, Nicole Stockdale (Dallas
Morning News), Christine Steele (The Capital Group Companies) and Wendalyn
Nichols (Copy Editor newsletter). |
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