Judging California's newspapers Judging California's newspapers (March 12, 2004)

by Jeb Bing

W ith 237 California newspapers vying for honors in the 2003 "Better Newspapers Contest," it's clear that readers and advertisers up and down the state are getting their money's worth. Not only are there more newspapers than ever serving the state, but the reporting, writing, printing and graphics qualities have never been better. I saw these ongoing improvements as a judge again this year in the annual competition sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Each year, California's daily and non-daily newspapers, including this one, compete for top honors in specific contest levels based on circulation and the frequency of our publications. These range from the Los Angeles Times, the largest circulating paper in the state, to small mountain dailies and weeklies with just a few thousand subscribers.

This year, more newspapers than ever before entered the competition, up 5 percent from last year on top of a 5 percent increase the year before. With each publication eligible to compete in one or all of 26 separate categories, the 225 judges in this year's contest are handling more than 5,000 separate entries, ranging from best lifestyle coverage to best editorial pages to the best story to the best special issue. Across the room, stacks of newspaper and tear sheets filled the tables as judges started their evaluations. And my session involving 90 judges in Sacramento was only the first. Another group of 85 will judge more entries next Thursday in Walnut Creek, including the Weekly's Managing Editor Dolores Ciardelli. The following week, another 60 will complete the initial judging in Ontario, with a group of nine out-of-state editors meeting in April to choose the final 442 first- and second-place winners. The blue ribbons will be announced at the CNPA's annual meeting in July.

The Pleasanton Weekly has carried home blue ribbons in the last two years, not bad for a newspaper that is just starting its fifth year of publication. But win or lose, it's a thrill to be involved in a contest where you can see the quantity and quality of the entries getting better every year. In the "General Excellence" category, where my team had to select four top candidates from 30 to 40 newspapers (none from our local region, however), we could have chosen almost all of them. Today's digital photography, better presses and computer-enhanced graphics give smaller papers like Placerville's Mountain Democrat the same technological advantages that only big-city dailies could afford just a few years ago.

That's true, too, of Web sites, a new category in the CNPA competition. Once viewed as a national domain, local Web sites are boosting interest and readership at the local level, attracting advertisers as well who are tapping into this window to a younger generation that for years ignored the print media. A Web booster is CNPA's Bryan Clark, who handles the annual "Better Newspapers Contest." He encourages newspapers to improve readership with user-friendly, interactive Web sites to advertisers and the newsroom, an effort that is paying off this year with a five-fold increase in contest entries for the Web site blue ribbon.

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