Well, now we’ve punned it. And described it. And headlined it.

By Matthew Crowley
Sept. 28, 2026

ACES: The Society for Editing’s annual headline contest, the last national competition remaining, named winners for 2025-26.

Here’s a taste:

• Gloom fills the people. Chaos fills the streets. Tear gas fills the air.
• Amazing graze: one tool for grassland conservation and wildfire mitigation
• A Town Meeting tradition ends — not with a bang but a clicker

The contest drew 22 individual entries and five staff entries. Fourteen volunteer judges assessed them.

Because the staff entry pool was so small, ACES judged it as one group, departing from the organizational size categories used in previous years. Also, because only one student entered (and no student staffs), ACES dispensed with the student category and moved the entry to Category C: Industry, corporate, or nonprofit content.

Category A: National media organizations
Audience is national or not limited to a specific region.

Category B: Regional or local media organizations
Audience is limited to a city or region.

Category C: Industry, corporate, or nonprofit content
Content created for a specific audience, not the general public.

And the winners are:

Individual, Category A (national media organizations): Sean Ernst, The New York Times. (This is his second title; the other was in 2023.)

Judges’ comments: This portfolio is profound, poetic and playful. “Gloom fills the people. Chaos fills the streets. Tear gas fills the air” paints a riveting image of the story’s topic: anti-government protests in Indonesia over economic hardship and a growing wealth disparity. I can just about see the gas clouds and feel the deep dismay. Going from grim to awwwwwesome, “At Bowling Green, Necessary Fluffness” alludes to Pudge, a cat who became Bowling Green State University’s de facto mascot. A player brought Pudge to the locker room, another player filmed him and the video went viral. The head alludes nicely to “unnecessary roughness,” a penalty-inducing U.S. football offense. Staying with sports, “Pruning the Rules of the Past, the Islanders Strut Their Scruff,” describes how the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders brought back playoff beards once straitlaced hockey executive Lou Lamoriello left the franchise.

David Bowman of the Los Angeles Times, the 2024-25 winner in this category, earned the honorable mention by finishing second.

Individual, Category B (regional or local media organizations): Rob Reinalda, The Concord Bridge

Judges’ comments: “Edifice wrecks: Town juggles options for aging public buildings” knocked my socks off, all the punch of Latin, all the allusions of drama, no translation necessary. “A Town Meeting tradition ends — not with a bang but a clicker” clicked, onomatopoeia and a bent cliché. Magic. “One if by lamb, two if by seafood: Abundant food options for the 250th” would probably make Henry Wadsworth Longfellow himself smile.

The Food Section’s Hanna Raskin took honorable mention.

Individual, Category C (industry, corporate, or nonprofit content): Peggy Scott, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. This is the second title for Scott, who also won this category in 2024.

Judges’ comments: This group was lyrical and fun. “Amazing Graze: One Tool for Grassland Conservation and Wildfire Mitigation,” was musical, getting “Amazing Grace” playing on the mental jukebox. “It’s Mutual: Wildlife and Symbiotic Relationships” elegantly explains symbiosis at a glance. “Rising from the Ashes: The Post-Wildfire Life of Western Pond Turtles” made reptiles into phoenixes.

Texas Electric Cooperatives’ Tom Widlowski, who won this category for 2024-25, took honorable mention.

Staff category: The Washington Post

Comments from the chair: A dazzling tour de force, this group. “A Streetcar named retire: Make way for a new bus,” melded Tennessee Williams and transportation for an eye-stopper. “Throwing shade at the window gazers” was made in the shade (in spades). “Persona non MAGA” was also fun, bringing sudden disdain for a faction into focus.

Feeling inspired now? Get your heads together for the 2026-27 contest. (And tell your friends.)

Matthew Crowley, an ACES member since 2001, is co-winner of the 2025 Henry Fuhrmann Mentor Award, issued by ACES and the Asian American Journalists Association’s Los Angeles chapter. He was a copy editor on the 2026 Almanac of American Politics and copy chief at PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking outlet.

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2025-26 winners