THE SCOOP: MONDAY, May 10

tennisreporters.net wins USTA Media Excellence Award
First web site to win annual award

The USTA today announced winners of the 2003 USTA Media Excellence Awards, naming tennisreporters.net partners Ron Cioffi and Matthew Cronin in the broadcast media category.

tennisreporters.net is the first web site to be selected in the four years that the broadcast media category has been awarded. The web site won the award after less than three years in existence. tr.net was also nominated for the broadcast award in 2002.

Cronin, Cioffi and other writers concentrate on providing in-depth analysis and news from pro tournaments around the world. The site delivers a mix of free stories plus newsletters and other articles for subscribers only. Contributors include Sandra Harwitt, Doug Robson, Eleanor Preston, Alix Ramsay and Richard Osborn, along with tour photographers Fred and Susan Mullane of Camerawork USA, and Siggi Bucher. Harwitt was a co-founder of the site when it began reporting from Paris just before the '01 Roland Garros.

James Beck of the Charleston Post & Courier won the honor for print media and Tracy Allen of The Call newspaper for multicultural media.

Cronin lives in Oakland, Calif. and serves as full-time writer for tennisreporters.net and as managing editor of the California-based Inside Tennis magazine. He has been the main English-language writer for official Grand Slam web sites including usopen.org, wimbledon.org and rolandgarros.org. Cronin is also a regular contributor to Reuters and did the play-by-play on some of the first web radio broadcasts of the US Open finals. He's also slated to be doing the first English language broadcasts on Rolandgarros.org this year.

Cioffi, who calls Alpharetta, Ga. home, serves as webmaster, writer and photographer for tennisreporters.net, and heads KRC Communications, which designs and produces numerous tennis-related publications. He teaches graphic design at North Georgia College & State University. His photos and articles have been published in Tennis magazine, Newsweek, American Photographer, Net News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yankee, Goal and Connecticut magazine.

"We are honored that tennisreporters.net was selected for this prestigious award and thank the USTA and the USTA Southern Section for considering us," Cioffi and Cronin said. "We have grown tennisreporters.net from its inception in May 2001 to one of the most influential and popular tennis news sites worldwide, attracting more than 400,000 unique visitors in the last 12 months by little more than word of mouth. We launched the site to help fill the void of serious tennis coverage in the United States and believe we have succeeded. Like the USTA, we are on a mission to further popularize tennis in the US. The Internet is the media of the future for delivering tennis news and we intend to stay at the top."

Beck, Allen Also Honored
Beck is part-time tennis columnist and writer for the Charleston Post & Courier in South Carolina. He started covering tennis for the Charleston newspapers in the 1970s. One of his earliest tennis memories is reporting the famous Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs match. Beck covers all levels of tennis from junior competition to pro tennis. He often presents a personal perspective to the pro game and covers community tennis programs and players with a unique voice. An avid USA League Tennis player, Beck plays in his local Mixed League with his wife and daughter, and is also an instructor in the City of Charleston's award-winning Courting Kids program.

Allen is full-time writer/reporter for The Call newspaper in Kansas City, Mo. Over the past 10 years, she has covered a wide variety of high school, collegiate and pro tennis events in the area. She also writes about junior and adult tournaments and inner-city clinics to promote opportunities for anyone who wants to play the game. Allen wrote an extensive four-part series entitled "Match Point: A Changing Face." Through historic insight and present-day relevance, the series focused on the influence of African-American players in changing the game of tennis.

The USTA presents media excellence awards annually to individuals or media outlets who have most contributed to the game of tennis by disseminating knowledge of the sport to the general public. All award nominees were judged on the basis of work from the 2003 calendar year. The 2003 USTA Media Excellence Awards will be presented at the '04 US Open. Each winner will receive a personal plaque and permanent recognition on a separate plaque placed in the US Open Media Center.