And the results...

You can almost feel December in the air. The crisp, winter-like temperatures. The holiday lights. The crowded stores. The questions from NCPA members about when contest results will arrive.

Well, for those on the edge of their seats waiting, hold on. It is highly likely that the results will be sent out by the end of this week. Papers that contacted us about getting their results via e-mail instead of snail mail by the Dec. 11 deadline will get them sent that way. Those that didn't contact us will get them delivered the usual way, via the U.S. Postal Service.

A couple of notes: Results from Community Service, Public Service, both Duke awards, the Weathers FOI Award, Hugh Morton POY and, of course, General Excellence will not be included with this release. General Excellence and Hugh Morton Photographer of the Year are not revealed until the presentation at Winter Institute (a great reason to be sure your newspaper is represented).

Second, please remember the information released will be for your newspaper only and only for your information. Award winners are not to be made public until after Winter Institute. In other words, don't write stories about your winners until after March 18, 2010.

Big entries and CDs

We received two separate questions from "Cantankerous on the South Fork" that we'll try to address in this one posting. Cantankerous wrote:

Some investigative series are neatly planned out before they are published and span just an issue or two, maybe even a few weeks. Well, not ours. Think Watergate in a small town. Our probe of problems in the sheriff's office began in March and isn't over. Happy to report our work led to the conviction of our chief deputy on obstruction of justice charges last week. We've had articles in at least 30 different editions over that time span. My plan is to enter just the most important articles, but I'm still looking at a fair number. So....Any suggestions on how to present a large number of articles neatly in the folder with the required stapling system?
-- Cantankerous on the South Fork

While you're on this subject, (Cantankerous is referring to the item below on CDs) I'm confused about the inclusion of CDs with the full digital version of pages with the general categories. I'd like to submit some material in the General Excellence and News Coverage categories, but I'm 99% sure my handy production department wiped out those files from May and March months ago in order to save space. (I could grumble about this, but what's done is done.) Am I out of luck?
-- Cantankerous on the South Fork

Thanks for the questions, Can (my new nickname for you). Let's tackle your second question first, because it's a lot easier. We know all about the making room on the drives for new files. Heck we're probably even guilty of it ourselves. However, there is an answer to this. Presuming that you still have the physical copies of the papers, take the fronts of those days' editions and take photographs of them. You can put those jpgs on the CD. Generally speaking jpg photos won't be as clean and crisp as pdfs, but they should work just fine for our purposes. So, you are not out of luck.

As for the entry with lots of clips to include... the thought here is to make it easy for the judge to read your entry in the proper order without having to suffer staple injuries. One suggestion is to first attach your clips to 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper, then arrange those sheets and staple them in the appropriate fashion to the folder. I'd attach an entire clip to one sheet, not try to cut out columns of type and reposition them on the page. This is not something you should do with single-story entries, but on the larger entries it may make sense.

Keep watching here because we might have some other thoughts on this later.

Viva la difference?

Gray wants to know:

Can photos be entered using DVDs rather than CDs? Most DVDs can hold all photos/image files entered - CDs have limited space.

Gray correctly points out that DVDs allow you to store a lot more data than your standard CD. As for our purposes, as long as the files are still jpg or pdf it doesn't matter to us whether it comes on a CD or DVD.

One point to remember, Gray, the digital files accompany your actual photography entries, which must be full-page tearsheets.

How much to include

Another question came in over the weekend:

Not sure if this is where I need to direct my question, but I've got one:

I'm looking to nominate something for sports news reporting. The series of stories are on one team in a state championship game. It was a pretty big deal around here. I have two stories on the front underneath a large photo, and a hammer head and numbers from the game are at the top. The whole package is part of the presentation. Do I include all of that? Or just the smaller stories underneath the photo?

Are we supposed to include photos with our stories at all?

Hey Anonymous (any relation to the last Anonymous?)

The category states "Clippings should be entered, not whole newspaper pages." So, don't enter the whole page. A clipping, however, can encompass the photos and certainly needs to include the headlines. Research has shown that in the eyes of most readers, headlines, photos, cutlines, graphics and yes, the actual text, make up the entire "story."

That having been said, remember from the judge's perspective, this is a writing category. Layout and photos are not the primary concern, but rather the reporting and writing rule. And when putting together your entry in the folder, remember not to make the judge work to find the story by burying it beneath photos, etc. Make it easy on them to locate the story and start reading it.

Stories from sections

Some person by the name of Anonymous left us this inquiry:

I have another question regarding special sections; are stories published in
special sections eligible for submission in the feature writing category?

Well, Anon, yes. Here's why -- the special section category judges the entirety of a section, not the individual elements of the section. Consequently, stories, headlines, photos, etc. that run in the section may be entered separately.

One caveat though: In order to be eligible, the section must have been inserted as part of the newspaper. Material from stand-alone niche publications cannot be entered.

Thanks for the question and next time don't feel so anonymous.

Those investigative sports folks

We received this inquiry from Julie:

What category should sports reporters use if they have an investigative project? There is a features category for them and a "single event" category. There is no investigative category for them.

Julie, you don't mention whether your newspaper is a daily or a community so we'll answer this for each division. You are correct that we don't have a separate category for investigative sports reporting and such a story really doesn't fit in the two sports writing categories.

However, in the daily divisions there is a News Enterprise/Investigative Reporting category (7) and in the community divisions we have Investigative Reporting (7). Investigative reporting by sports writers certainly fit in these categories as they are not just for work by those veteran reporters on "the news side." Investigative work helps set newspapers apart from other media regardless of what section it appears in and should be rewarded as such.

Special section question

We received this inquiry from Ken at the Havelock News:

We put together a special magazine on our city's 50th anniversary. We were in charge of content. However, our Shopper was in charge of selling it. The cover of the magazine states that it is a product of the Havelock News and Shopper. Would this preclude it from being allowed to be entered into the special section category? Again, the news content is ours. The advertising is theirs.

It sounds like fair game for the Special Section category to us, as long as it was inserted in your newspaper and not just in the shopper.