As you might expect with a press club, there’s a story behind this.

The Press Club of Cleveland is currently being threatened with legal action by The Associated Press and its law firm, Higbee & Associates, over an alleged copyright violation. The alleged violation involves the Press Club republishing a Northeast Ohio newspaper’s Sports section front, which included an Associated Press photo, as part of our efforts to celebrate the best in journalism in Ohio.

Thus far our appeals to AP and to the law firm that we had the newspaper’s permission to reproduce the page, that the Press Club is a nonprofit entity that realized no income from the noncommercial use of this newspaper page and that, c’mon, this is about celebrating journalism have all been rejected.

While we continue to try to make our case – and avoid paying the settlement that the law firm has offered and the lawsuit that the law firm continues to threaten us with – we have reluctantly decided to remove all our awards material to avoid any other such claims.

We take copyrights and the protection of journalists’ work very seriously. We also take seriously the opportunities to feature that good work – and encourage more of it.

We hope to restore our award winners on our website soon.

And, no, the absurdity of all this is not lost on us.