God, how I hate journalism-award contests.
Don’t get me wrong; I love winning awards in newspaper contests. It’s nice, even though there’s no way to really, truly, quantifiably judge what makes one article better than another. This means contests are often a semi-meaningless crapshoot. But, hey, you get idiot plaques that make for fun target practice. It gives you a chance to go to awards ceremonies, eat rubber chicken and have awkward conversations with other journalists you’ve never met before. Good times.
What I hate about journalism contests is the process of entering them. There are three journalism contests we faithfully enter every year, and we entered a fourth this year. Three of the four contests have recent entry deadlines, and each of the three has completely different rules. For one, entrants submit tearsheets–that’s articles clipped (or, as the word says, torn) from a real issue–or submit Web site printouts, at least in most categories. For another, entrants are encouraged to upload PDFs of pages to a contest Web site–except for in certain other categories, where you have to send tearsheets. The third contest involves putting entries in cute binders, something like you’d do for a freshman book report.
The process is a pain in the ass. Some writers are cooperative and suggest stuff to enter when asked; others only cooperate–sometimes–under extreme pressure to do so (hello, James Reel!). You have to navigate dusty archives to find old issues. You get paper cuts and inky fingers. And it all takes a LOT time that would be better spent doing something else. Anything else. Ah, but the annoying part is over–for at least a few months. Time to eat rubber chicken, have awkward conversations and get plaques. Again … good times!
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2006.