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The Best Newspaper in the eUS Contest

Sponsored by The Lightning Rod
Yes, I know it may be slightly unfair that the sponsor is also participating in this tournament, but if you want to complain go tell the winners (after this is over) that they should have gotten a significantly smaller prize just so life was a bit fairer.



ROUND 1 IS NOW OVER. RESULTS ARE COMING SOON!

The Qualifiers Revealed, Round 1 Begins!

Keep Track of the Tournament Bracket and All the Results on THIS SPEADSHEET. Current Round 1 Standings are can be found here, click the "Round 1" tab at the bottom.

The Round 1 Voting Form is here. Please read the article before voting.

I’m going to be short and to the point. Here are the results from the qualification roun😛



THE QUALIFIERS

Alice's Wonderland – 62 Votes
Hephaestus' Anvil – 18 Votes
The Speaker – 10 Votes
ThErepublik Minute – 10 Votes
The Federalist Papers – 8 Votes
Wallis Media – 8 Votes
The Paper Mache - 5 Votes
Spectacular Times – 5 Votes
The Lightning Rod – 5 Votes
Clever Newspaper Name – 5 Votes
The Paperless Newspaper – 4 Votes
Digging Deeper – 4 Votes
The Newton Factor – 3 Votes
Change You Can Believe In – 3 Votes
Custer's Stand – 3 Votes
Note Book – 2 1/2 Votes

THE NON-QUALIFIERS
Everyday American – 2 Votes
News, Inc. -2 Votes
The Half Times - 2 Votes
Shining in the Darkness -1 Vote
The Angry Kitten -1 Vote
The Aphrodite News -1 Vote
The Karnataka Post -1 Vote
Fightin' 'round the World -1 Vote
McSkittles Times -1 Vote
Ironic Oxymoron -1 Vote
Lorem Ipsum - 1/2 Vote

The reason you see half votes is because I counted some comments that people left as half of a vote (because you were not supposed to leave a comment, but fill out the form.) Also, some vote totals may be less than shown in the previous article because I thoroughly checked for accidental submissions of the form and for other issues with some votes only when counting the final time. For more information, including the tournament bracket, the authors of all of the newspapers, and more, see this Google spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will be updated each round.



Prizes
Due to the great generosity of our sponsor, The Lightning Rod, who has contributed 18 gold to the prize pot, there is now 21 Gold in prizes.

The prizes are as follows:

1st Place: 15 Gold

2nd Place: 5 Gold

3rd Place: 1 Gold

Good Luck to all!




ROUND 1

Now that the qualification round is over, the rest of the tournament will take be structured as an elimination bracket. At the start of round 1 (now), there are 16 newspapers in contention. At the end, only 8 (one-half of the starting amount) will be left. Eventually, after the quarterfinals, the semifinals, and the finals, only one newspaper will remain. That paper will be the Best Newspaper in the eUS.

In this elimination bracket, pairs of newspapers go head-to-head each round. Whichever newspaper gets more votes will advance to the next round and face-off against another newspaper that made it. The losers will be eliminated.

The Round 1 voting form can be found here. This form can be filled out only once. You can vote for as few or as many newspapers as you want, but you can only pick one per pair. THIS FORM WILL BE OPEN UNTIL 23:59 on Day 968 (Thursday).

The pairs are structured the way that most professional tournaments are structured, so that the best newspapers do not get eliminated immediately. For example, the newspaper with the most qualifying votes will not immediately face the newspaper with the second most qualifying votes, but it will rather face one of the papers with the fewest qualifying votes. For all of the details, see the aforementioned spreadsheet.



Issues Encountered - Including A Cheater

I encountered a variety of issues involving the qualification voting. First, some people left comments instead of voting on the form. Some people voted for the same newspaper more than once. One person voted for three papers using one form.

But at least none of the above people intentionally cheated.

When looking at the results from the form, I found it suspicious that 10 votes were recorded in a row for Ironic Oxymoron. Further investigation showed that all of the votes were within a four minute period, and that some were only seconds away from each other. I looked up the profiles of those who voted. The first was the author of the newspaper. I messaged the second, he later got back to me telling me he did not fill out any sort of newspaper form whatsoever. The other 8 had 0 wellness, meaning they were dead. There were no other votes after these 10 in a row, even though the author asked his readers (in regular size letters at the bottom of an article) to vote for him.

Some people may jump to conclusions and say it was the author, Jameson L. Tai, who cheated. However, while all of the evidence points toward him (he is the only one who could gain anything from the crime and he was the first vote out of the 10 votes in succession), I have no definite proof that it was him, and therefore I counted his vote (but none of the others). One vote was not enough to get his newspaper a spot in Round 1, however.

Also, somebody “spammed” my form, and I got about 3000 results with random letters. While I was able to (with effort) bypass this, it wasted my time and was very annoying. If anybody knows how to prevent this, I would greatly appreciate a message explaining how or with a link to a site explaining how.


In summary, good luck to all contestants! The spreadsheet with all of the useful data is here, and the voting form is here. Thanks again to all of the participants, voters, and the sponsor!



Thanks for reading. If you see any errors, please leave a comment or message me. Please Vote and Subscribe!