From the Winter 2024 issue of California Publisher
Whether you run a large, medium or small newsroom, you’ll want to read this.
CNPA’s California Journalism Awards are getting a huge revamp this year, meaning there are more options for entering your team’s good work. As we roll out the entry guidelines for the contest, we want to encourage all members to take a close look at the new categories and rules. We are standing by to answer your questions as you prepare your entries!
Perhaps the biggest change is the contest committee agreed to merge the Print and Digital contests, making for inclusion and balanced competition across the membership.
The General Excellence awards are also getting an overhaul to ensure we are truly recognizing the best work by newsrooms of all sizes.
And, by popular demand, we are bringing back fourth- and fifth-place awards in categories where there are a sufficient number of entries to award such prizes.
It’s a lot to chew on, right.
Let’s start with the new categories, which we hope will prompt more newsrooms to enter their team’s good work from across more coverage areas and content verticals, and recognize new areas of work our publications must master to succeed.
The new categories are:
• Labor Reporting
• Homelessness Reporting
• Technology Reporting
• Film and TV Writing/Reporting
• Music Writing/Reporting
• Food Writing/Reporting
• Fine Arts Writing/Reporting
• Transportation Reporting
• Community Calendar
• Religion and Faith Writing
• Tourism/Travel Writing/Reporting
• Immigration Reporting
We have added categories to recognize excellence in digital publishing, including
• Home Page Layout and Design
• Online Story Presentation Page Layout & Design
Also new this year are six categories that aim to help publishers earn recognition for their audience, community and innovation work:
• Community Focus Award
• Excellence in Collaborations and Partnerships
• Social Media Innovation Award
• Audience/Community Engagement Award
• Innovative Technology Award
• Sustainability Award
Our contest committee, which included about 10 editors from across the CNPA membership, analyzed the contest categories from recent years and collaborated to devise new categories that would be more inclusive.
As an editor and publisher, I’m encouraged by the additions. And as a competitor, I’m already looking to my teams’ 2023 clips to see where we can put more of our work up against our esteemed colleagues from around CNPA-land.
The Campus contest remains unchanged for work published in 2023.
Merged contests promote inclusion
A review of participation levels from recent years indicated that there were many CNPA newsrooms that had not been entering the California Journalism Awards. One of the north stars of this contest overhaul was to create more opportunities for newsrooms to enter work that they consider award-worthy.
Another concern was that the distinction between print and digital operations at many publications has largely dissolved in recent years. We have sought to change the contest to keep up with the changing reality of being a news publisher in 2023.
This year, there is one contest for all CNPA Members: No more “Print and Digital divide.” The contest committee analyzed Print circulation, Digital-only unique monthly visitors and staffing numbers for both to create a new seven-division contest.
This means that Print entrants who entered unique work in the Digital contest will now compete on a level field with Digital News members. And Digital-only members will be able to compete in a broader number of categories, directly with their Print counterparts.
New path to General Excellence
The final change was a tricky one, in that the committee needed to weigh the value and prestige of the General Excellence Awards against the opportunity for more CNPA Members to compete by virtue of their most intensive and enterprising work.
The Print General Excellence Award had previously been based upon a member submitting two complete Print editions, while Digital General Excellence was based upon a judge’s review of the entire website.
Under the new rules, newsrooms must win at least two first-place awards or a first place and two other awards (second, third, fourth or fifth place) in any category of the 2023 contest to advance to consideration for the General Excellence award.
Judges will determine General Excellence winners by evaluating a newsroom’s winning entries across all categories of the 2023 contest plus their supplemental materials: either two complete print editions, or a review of a publication’s website.
More details about this will be published in the entry guidelines, and we will host some webinars to answer questions members may have.
I call this a win for all entrants whose bodies of work add up to a level above and beyond that contained in a single edition.
Overall, it’s a huge way for our publications to put their best work up for review and for CNPA to showcase the wealth of good work across all of our newsrooms.
I hope you’ll take a look and seize the opportunity. New rules and categories are at CNPA.com. The entry deadline is Feb. 13, 2024.
CNPA Chairperson Emily Charrier is editor and publisher of Sonoma Media Investments’ Sonoma Index-Tribune and publisher of the Petaluma Argus-Courier.
