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| | SPECIALCOVERAGE Conference sights andsounds Speaker handouts, etc. ACES conference blog
PRIMARY COVERAGE
2006 conference homepage 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 setof New Orleans Times-Picayune front pages from the days followingHurricane Katrina went to Don Podesta of the Washington Post for $550 . | | | Having fun and helping out Bidders found just what they were looking for
in the ACES silent and live auctions |
By Gerri Berendzen
Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader copy chief Brian Throckmortonwalked out of the ACES silent auction Friday night as the winnerof "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, whichbenefited from the proceeds of one of the most eclectic silentauctions in the American Copy Editors Society's 10-year history.
Whether people were jealous of Throckmorton's purchased awardis unclear. What is clear is that many ACES members were willingto open their checkbooks to help out.
Spirited bidding for silent-auction items ranging from a printof the Sex Pistols to a bottle of Sass Pinot Noir, and from the"Christmas Story"-inspired leg lamp to a set of 2005 World Seriestickets for the Cleveland Indians, helped raise $4,950.96 forthe Education Fund coffers.
Later in the evening, the bidding started again at a live auctionheld after the banquet keynote speech, this time raising $3,075to help the New Orleans Times-Picayune Hurricane Relief Fund.
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| Copy chief Paula Devlinof the New Orleans Times-Picayune models a Times-Picayune "comehell or high water" T-shirt autographed by members of her desk. Four ofthe shirts sold for $975 during live bidding Friday night at the ACES banquet. The live auction raised money for hurricane relief. | | ACES auctionmeister Scott Toole, news editor of the Express-Times in Easton,Pa., urged ACES members to "bid with your hearts and not withyour heads."
He took that to heart, bidding $225 for a Times-Picayune "ComeHell or High Water" T-shirt autographed by the members of theT-P copy desk.
Don Podesta of the Washington Post helped out with a $550 winningbid for a complete set of Times-Picayune front page prints fromthe days immediately following Hurricane Katrina.
Others who helped the Hurricane Relief Fund with winning liveauction bids were Sara Hendricks of the Victoria (Texas) Advocate($150 for a set of autographed Katrina photographs), MelissaMcCoy of the Los Angeles Times ($500 for tuition to the API NewsEditors and Copy Chiefs seminar and $275 for a T-P autographed T-shirt),Mary Gladstone of Religion Link ($150 for the book "One Deadin the Attic"), Rebecca Dyer of Tribune Newspapers in Mesa, Ariz.($250 for a T-P autographed T-shirt), Neil Holdway of the DailyHerald in Arlington Heights, Ill.,($225 for a T-P T-shirt), ACESco-founder Hank Glamann ($125 for a Cleveland Plain Dealer toy bicycle and$225 for a Beatles print) and Daniel Hunt of the Press Democratin Santa Rosa, Calif. ($100 for a Beatles print).
At the silent auction, things got off to a quick start whenMelissa Spirek of Bowling Green State University came into theauction room and signed her name to any newspaper-related itemsbeing offered.
Spirek was hoping to bring home a few goodies for her own silentauction, conducted for journalism students at her university.Her plans to "re-auction" for education's sake dovetailed nicelywith ACES goal of raising money for its Education Fund.
Tammy Yates of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and KathySchenck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also helped out withlively bidding for a print of the Sex Pistols.
"We're probably the last two people at this convention who looklike Sex Pistols fans," Yates said.
After Yates got the print up to $80, Schneck slipped behindher and upped the price to $85. But she knew the bidding wasn'tdone.
"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 ofSass wine. Liz McGehee of the Washington Post was close behindwith a $110 bid for a Beatles print.
But whether the bid was $5 or $120, people were having fun stalkingout their item while helping out ACES.
"I bid $4 on the Crawford, Texas, pocketknife," said TV Week'sJenny Butler. "Then someone came up behind me and bid $20. Ithink 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 Timestold Toole as he prepared to count down the last seconds of theauction.
With five minutes left and the tension mounting, Toole calledout "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. | | 
| Melissa Spirek, a BowlingGreen State University professor, places her bid. | | 
| Bill Walsh (Washington Post),center, chats with Bill Fink and Jennifer Johnson, both ofthe Seattle Post-Intelligencer. | | | 
| Browsing through the booksat the silent auction are, from left, Nicole Stockdale (DallasMorning News), Christine Steele (The Capital Group Companies) and Wendalyn Nichols (Copy Editor newsletter). | | | | |