Thursday, May 02, 2013

Q1 newsroom Awards of Excellence announced

The first-quarter awards "show newsrooms across the company are fast becoming expert video storytellers and are innovating new ways to gather and publish content," according Corporate's News Department, which announced winners this morning.

13 comments:

  1. Monroe always does well in its division. They've done good against all of the challenges thrown their way. Hats off to them, and a fitting tribute to some great careers at that site, including the journalist-publisher David Petty. What happened to the Florida and NJ papers?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What happened to NJ papers? Looks like they did okay...

      1) WATCHDOG JOURNALISM
      Division I
      First Place
      Asbury Park Press
      Shannon Mullen, staff writer

      For a thorough investigation into the hard-to-crack inner workings of the world of charitable foundations.

      2) PUBLIC SERVICE JOURNALISM
      Division I
      Finalist
      Asbury Park Press
      Dustin Racioppi, staff writer

      For “A Blind Eye,” an investigation into substandard and unsafe housing that was overlooked by lax inspectors. Reporter Dustin Racioppi took a certified housing inspector to several rental homes in heavily immigrant neighborhoods. All would have failed proper inspections. He then checked township records which showed the homes had passed inspection, or had not been inspected at all, even though they were approved for rental.

      3) DESIGN
      Division 1
      Finalists
      Asbury Park Press
      Jennifer Meyer, designer

      For Jennifer Meyer's design work for table, Asbury Park's food section. A diverse assortment of presentations ranging from typographic to infographic to illustrative and photo-driven.

      Delete
  2. Newsrooms? I thought they were information centers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Way to go Arizona Republic on all those first place wins. So good that Managing Editor Nicole Carroll was a judge.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Newsrooms? I thought they were aggregators.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, it looks like every Gannett site won something -- except the Tennessean. Wonder if the editors were so busy planning stories for June and beyond that they forgot to submit entries?

    ReplyDelete
  6. There were several others not mentioned. You could audit that. Entering is an art form. The judges respond to those who match the Gannett objectives. Old school approaches were discarded. Next time, be inventive and highlight digital efforts more. You'll see that a few NJ papers, a few Louisiana papers and a few other old-guards didn't get as much as the annual favorites. Breaking through is tough in mid-level papers because they just don't have the salaries to hire experienced talent and veterans do not have the long-time editors to coach and form their work because they were cut or took buyouts. We could re-title the contest to suggest: best at managing the decline and holding onto some journalists who still love it all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When I was an editor, I put together many contest entries. My experience was this:

      Put extra effort into writing any text describing why a particular entry is prize worthy. Contest judges are just as busy as you are -- probably more, since they're still expected to do their real jobs back home while they're judging entries.

      Whether they mean to or not, they may rely more on what you say a story/package is about than what it's actually about. Now, that doesn't mean you should flat-out lie about your entry: Don't say it resulted in, say, a change in police procedures if it didn't.

      But bear in mind that the entry forms can shape a judge's opinion well before they actually look at the story/photo/graphic/package that you're entering.

      I wrote my entries in paragraphs that a judge could just copy and past into a document of winners. Why make it any harder than necessarily?

      Delete
  7. "Look at" are the key words. Judges don't read the entries. This had been proved time and again.

    Congratulations on gaming the system, Jimbo.

    ReplyDelete
  8. *prize-worthy *paste *necessary

    ...and that's why even the best writers have editors.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.