Plan ahead for contests

Year-end budget process is best time to search for entries

By Richard Stone
TPA Contest Committee Chairman
Reprinted from the Granite Pub

Here are a couple of dates for you to plug into your calendar for early next year ...

Feb. 1, Feb. 10, March 1, March 31, April 1 ...

These are contest deadlines and they always creep up on you and arrive when you least expect them. Their approach creates havoc in most news offices as publishers and editors scramble to gather material for a winning entry.

Too many publishers look at the whole exercise as too much bother and simply blow it off. This is unfortunate. Those publishers don’t realize the energizing impact a first place award can have on a news staff or on the community the

paper serves.

It’s really not that hard to prepare your entries. All it takes is a little planning ... and not much of that.

Let’s leave for another column your first opportunity to get ready for competition. That opportunity occurs each week as you select photos, news stories and editorials for publication. Save the TPA/Better Newspaper Contest Call for Entries and look at it every now and then to make sure that your newspaper is publishing material that meets competition guidelines.

Your second opportunity to get ready just happened ... that was when you reviewed last year’s newspapers as you got ready for the 2004 budgeting process. Again, pull out that Call for Entries and keep the requirements in mind as you perform your review. Make a few notes (and hang on to them).

Your third opportunity is coming up. At The Cameron Herald, we always use the issue between

Christmas and New Year’s to publish a retrospective or Year in Review issue. The research we do for that issue is an excellent starting point for preparing for contest. Use this time to look for your best photos, your best editorials and your best feature stories. Take notes so you will already know where to look for that dynamic front page or special photo layout when the time comes to prepare your contest entries.

This process can help in a totally unrelated matter as well. As you look over last year’s papers, watch for stories that need a follow up. If you find yourself looking at a story and asking, “I wonder what ever happened to ...” you need to follow up on that story.

Finally, when you enter that first contest, keep a record of what you entered. Most contests ask for the same kind of material. One of the photos you enter in the South Texas Press Association’s competition (deadline usually around the first of February) will likely make a good entry for TPA

(April 1 deadline).

If you are in doubt about criteria for TPAentry categories, call Pauline Word at the TPA office (512-477-6755 or e-mail paulineword@texaspress.com) and she will get a copy of last year’s call to you. The TPA call is a very good template for all other contests — and they really don’t change much from year to year.

In Cameron, we keep a file of calls for previous contests and another for future calls.

The TPA Web site (texaspress.com) posts deadlines for some major regional and national newspaper contests, including the National Newspaper Association. The first contest deadline is Feb. 1 (Pulitzer). The TPABNC deadline is (April 1).

You will still have to take the time to actually pull the issues and prepare the entries for each contest you enter but, if you take a little time now, the process won’t cripple you later.