Attendance: Mark Murphy, Providence Business News, president; Paul Spetrini, Independent Newspapers, vice president; Nancy Kirsch, freelance, treasurer; Linda Levin, URI emeritus, secretary; Sue Areson, and Alan Rosenberg, Providence Journal; Sheila Mullowney, Newport Daily News; and Benjamin Branchaud, Narragansett Times.

Minutes for February Meeting: Approved.

Treasurer’s Report: Beginning balance was $21,274.41. Current balance is $24,225.94. Of this, $858.47 was primarily for contest expenses, and $3,810 was contest income.

Banquet: The cost per person will remain at $30, even though the O Club is charging $31. The association will absorb the extra. Kirsch said those attending can mail checks to her at 106 Freeman Parkway, Providence, RI, 02906. Levin said she would send all board members a “Save the Date” flyer.

Contest: Spetrini gave a recap of this year’s contest which is at the end of the minutes. He said RIPA received six entries for the new Community Outreach Award category. He said 12 member companies and 32 publications submitted 456 entries.

The board members at this meeting joined a conference call to the Idaho Press Club which has had a digital contest for the last two years. RIPA has judged it both years, and RIPA wants to go digital next year. This call was to learn about some of the pros and cons of the process.Here’s what they were told:

• Before RIPA begins, it should walk through the entry process at both ends.

• Get proposals from several companies to handle the contest.

• Know who in our organization is uploading the entries, and who in the company will be getting the award.

• Keep track of the number of entries, such as putting it all on an Excel spreadsheet, and consider using PayPal for entry fees.

• The service to handle the contest could cost $3,000 for the first year and then $1,500 each year after that.

• Give ourselves plenty of time to set this all up.

• Give members plenty of time to understand how to upload.

• Someone in RIPA needs to review every entry before it is uploaded because the system can’t make changes or fixes.

• Think about administration at the end and what you will need.

• Have a good flow chart set up.

Areson suggested getting the rules out to members no later than November along with some kind of online tutorial about how to upload entries. Mullowney suggested bringing in someone from the vendor we select to train people. The board agreed that the digital contest for 2014 should be announced at this year’s banquet on May 2. Spetrini said he has asked Idaho for our winners by April 11. He asked that RIPA make glossy photos of the winners in the photo categories.

Website: Levin said she would help with the RIPA website update. Discussion of this was postponed to the April meeting.

Next Meeting: It will be at the Narragansett Times on Friday, April 18, at 9 a.m. (The Narragansett Times office is on Main Street in Wakefield.

 

The following is a recap and analysis of the 2013 Rhode Island Press Association editorial contest prepared by Paul Spetrini, RIPA vice president.

I. Overview of 2013 Contest

All told, this year’s editorial contest drew submissions from 12 member organizations representing 32 publications. Of member organizations participating last year, only Breeze Publications—which represents the Valley Breeze—did not participate. East Bay Newspapers, which missed last year’s contest deadline, returned to this year’s contest with 17 paid entries.

The Providence Journal submitted the most material for the contest, with 118 total paid entries in all, and Providence Media submitted the second-most, with a total of 76 paid entries.

In total, this year’s editorial contest drew 456 paid submissions and six entries for the community service award, bringing the total amount of contest money to $4,870. For comparison, last year’s contest drew 458 entries for a total of $4,850.

II. Contest Categories

In last year’s contest, we were unable to garner the minimum number of submissions to fully judge a category for three categories (Arts Review or Criticism, Editorial Writer and Best Website), though we did award winners for the former two as they each received four submissions.

This year, thanks to our special highlighting of those categories, and our removal of the Best Website category, submissions were up dramatically as the Arts Review & Criticism category received 14 submissions in all and we had seven submissions for Editorial Writer.

Unfortunately, our push for two online-based categories went largely unnoticed as the Best Digital Presentation category only drew two total entries, and as such will not be judged, and the Best Use of Digital Tools category only drew three entries, meaning there will only be a winner announced.

One other change we made this year was the creation of an Arts/Feature/Niche columnist category. While we received a surprising 21 submissions for this category, the distinction appears to have come at the expense of our general Columnist/News Columnist category as that category went from 16 submissions in 2013 to just three this year.

Our most popular writing categories this year were 10- Profile or Personality Story and 12-Feature Story (In-Depth.) Each received 27 entries and we up from last year. Other notably competitive categories include 16-Unique/Most Unexpected Story (22 entries), 22-Arts/Feature/Niche Columnist (21 entries) and 15-Food & Dining Story (18 entries).

Our photography categories continue to remain quite competitive as 25-Feature Photo garnered 21 entries, 26-Personality Photo or Portrait received 20 entries and 23-General News Photo had 19 Entries.

Lastly, our design categories were on pace with last year’s entries, with the most competitive category being 32-Best Cover, which had an impressive 17 entries.

As noted above, both our two online-based categories failed to draw as much interest as we had hoped and the News Columnist category struggled as well. All other categories received at least five submissions.

III. Community Service Award

For the first time this year, we introduced the idea of a Community Service Award and it was, thankfully, met with great interest. All told, we received six very detailed entries for the contest, more than enough to award a worthy winner, and I expect the award will continue to get more popular once it is fully realized at our annual banquet. I do wonder if we will be able to run this category next year, however, as the materials were largely print-based and may not transfer over digitally.

IV. Issues with contest rules

As was the case last year, this year’s contest rules drew a lot of confusion regarding eligibility and rule changes. In all, however, disqualified entries were down dramatically as I really tried to work with member organizations whenever possible.

Most of the issues had to do with simple misunderstandings of the rules (I.E. Publications submitting multiple entries in one category by the same writer, publications misreading the rules regarding designers being limited to one entry per category or publications failing to submit TWO copies of the entry forms with a submission.)

As was the case last year, I interacted with member organizations to fix these issues whenever possible as the spirit of this contest has always been to include as many of the submissions as possible.

Of the 18 total entries which failed to properly follow the rules, I only had to ultimately disqualify two entries, one from Providence Monthly (which submitted four entries in the Most Unusual category when it was only allowed three) and one from the Providence Journal (which submitted two multi-bylined stories in the Spot News category.)

V. Designer and Photography confusion

There were two other areas in this year’s contest that caused a bit of confusion.

First, was the issue of the eligibility of designers in the Front Page/Cover categories. As we moved to limit individual designers to one submission per category, many of our member publications, which only have one person in charge of design, were forced to limit their entries to either one or enter others under the title “Staff Members.”

I received many complaints about this change, most coming from smaller publications that felt it unfairly limited the chance for their designers to compete in the contest as there are significantly more writing (23) and photography categories (6) than there are design categories (4) and even in the photography categories, individual photographers are allowed two submissions per category.

The general feedback seems to be changing the design categories to either the same restrictions as the photography categories, meaning an individual designer can enter two submissions per category, or setting a maximum number of submissions per publication in a design category regardless of who the individual designer was.

The other major issue was in regard to the photography categories themselves. This year, the Providence Journal overloaded the photography categories with as many as 10 submissions per category. After a check of the rules, this was allowable as the rules do not set a limit on the number of submissions a publication can make in the photography categories. This was a point of confusion for other organizations, who thought they were limited to three entries per category as they are in every non-photography category. For future contests, we as a board need to either set a maximum entry limit for photography categories, as we do with writing categories, or spell out in the rule book that there is no limit.

VI. Issues with payment

While I won’t go into detail here, there were multiple issues this year regarding payment of contest fees. While it is understandable that some of our member organizations have to clear checks with their publishers or corporate owners, there was far too much confusion this year regarding tracking payments, missing checks and misread totals to not raise concern.

I received no less than seven checks from organizations AFTER I received their entries and after the postmarked contest deadline and while I have no doubt our organizations are good for the money, I would caution against allowing members to participate in the contest that have not paid their contest fees as it exposes us to a potentially risky situation if the judging results come out before our organizations have paid their fees.

I believe part of this is the nature of our contest as our contest window is only open for a month and some organizations wait until the very end to gather their submissions but I am concerned with going to an all-digital contest next year that there may be even more issues to check if/when publications are allowed to submit their own material directly into an online contest system.

VI. Summary of this year’s contest and recommendations

All in all, this year’s contest seemed to run much smoother than last year’s. While there are still some issues to iron out and we must make decisions regarding the future viability of online-based categories, which seem to gain no traction with our members, interest nonetheless remains high in the contest across all of our publications and it should make for a very competitive contest for years to come.

My recommendations are as follows: 1.) We poll our member organizations to see whether or not there is interest in online-based contest categories. The past few years have shown that may not be the case. If not, I believe we should make a decision to remove these categories until the interest picks up. 2.) I believe the majority of the rule changes were well-received but some need to be adjusted/modified/clarified to remove lingering confusion. 3.) I believe the Community Service Award was a strong idea and will only continue to grow, especially during an election year. 4.) I believe we need to increase the time we give member organizations to gather their entries and put a firm rule in place that submissions will not be deemed eligible until payment for the contest is received. 5.) Lastly, I believe we must allow ourselves extra time next year to work out any issues switching to a digital contest present.

All in all, however, the contest this year was a strong success and I look forward to seeing it grow in 2015

-Paul J. Spetrini, Vice President, Rhode Island Press Association

 

Submitted by: Linda Lotridge Levin, secretary