SPJ awards

[buzz1941]

Always interesting to see how the local newspapers play up their wins in the annual Society of Professional Journalists awards. The Honolulu Advertiser, despite massive resources and twice the staff of the Star-Bulletin, managed to make their distant placing look like a big win. Seems they took a straight Associated Press story on the event and rewrote it to make themselves look good, and then ran it accredited to AP only. Not very honest.

[shaveice]

Re: SPJ awards

i don't know anything about either organization but what's your opinion regarding their sunday papers? about the same in quality? you prefer one over the other? and why?

just curious....

[BKHale2007]

Re: SPJ awards

I have to look through the list of SPJ awards, but I notice some Big Island-based publications have often won: Environment Hawaii, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, even North Hawaii News. Curiously, Hawaii Island Journal hasn't won anything as far as I can tell.

[buzz1941]

Re: SPJ awards

The thing about awards like this is that WHERE they came from doesn't matter, it's the quality of the piece itself. They're judged far away, where they don't know that the Honolulu Advertiser is the big mean dog, and the North Hawaii News is not. The very size of the Advertiser often mitigates against quality work, particularly when a bunch of mid-level managers feel obligated to place thumbprints on everything.

[dick]

Re: SPJ awards

>>> They're judged far away, where they don't know that the Honolulu Advertiser is the big mean dog, and the North Hawaii News is not<<<

Theoretically the judges shouldn't know anything about the piece they're judging. Generally names and papers and other identifiers are blocked from view in order to keep some semblance of fairness to the judging. I've judged quite few mainland contests (photo categories) in my time, and we (judges) generally don't know anything (about the photo) except the naked entry.

[jdub]

Re: SPJ awards

>>> They're judged far away, where they don't know that the Honolulu Advertiser is the big mean dog, and the North Hawaii News is not<<<

Theoretically the judges shouldn't know anything about the piece they're judging. Generally names and papers and other identifiers are blocked from view in order to keep some semblance of fairness to the judging. I've judged quite few mainland contests (photo categories) in my time, and we (judges) generally don't know anything (about the photo) except the naked entry.

that about sets it straight for me...

[buzz1941]

Re: SPJ awards

Judges try not to be influenced by things like quality of reproduction or the luxury of nice paper stock, etc., but sometimes these things color their decisions.