Information for Judges of the 2008 Washington Better Newspaper Contest
Thank you for volunteering to be a judge for the online portion of our News Division competition. You should have already received an e-mail from Mae Waldron at WNPA with a list of categories, a link to the online Judging Form, and a PDF of the News section of the Contest Rules.
Before you start judging a category, please:
1. Review the Contest Rules.
2. Look briefly at all the entries in the category to familiarize yourself with the context within which entries are competing. You'll be comparing the entries to each other to select the three winners.
3. On each tear sheet, the corners of the entry will be marked in bold. A label will identify the category, newspaper name and the entry number for this newspaper in this category (01, 02, 03 etc.).
JUDGING INSTRUCTIONS
1. Please award a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner in all categories. No ties and no honorable mentions, please. News entries should be judged on the merits of the reporting and writing, without regard for design or graphic elements.2. In the online Judging Form, please include the newspaper name and story number (for example, Anacortes American 02) and the headline of each winning entry. That will help us know which comment goes with which entry, if one newspaper or person wins more than one award in a single category.
3. Enter your comments about the merits of the winning entries in the Judging Form.
4. Press Submit Winners to send in your comments.
If you can't finish judging a category in one sitting, press Submit Winners to send in what you can finish at the moment. Use a new Judging Form to enter information on the remaining winners in the category. Please include your name and the category on the second form so WNPA can match the second round of winners to the correct category.
When you've finished judging all the categories, please use the category list in the e-mail message from Mae Waldron to verify that you've completed your assigned categories.
QUESTIONS
If you have questions while judging please call Mae Waldron at WNPA, (206) 634-3838, or e-mail her at mwaldron@wnpa.comIf you have trouble with the Judging Form, you may e-mail your judging results to Mae Waldron, mwaldron@wnpa.com. Details of what to put in the e-mail are on each category page.
Thank you for being a judge. It's a big commitment of time and energy, and we appreciate your volunteering.
Click to locate your judging assignments.
