2023 Regional Publications Contests

The BetterBNC website for the State publication contests are live and accepting contest entries. Click the button to go to login; once logged in, you need to select either the 2022 JACC State Publications Contest. You'll also see a button to download a copy of the  JACC Publication Contest rules and criteria.

THIS YEAR'S DEADLINE: June 30, 9 p.m. Pacific time Update: Extension through July 5 at 9 p.m.

If you have questions, or want more information, please see this message from the contest chair, Patrick Schmiedt:

"Hi JACC friends, 

Believe it or not, it's time for your entries for the 2023 JACC regional publication contests! 

The two regional contests -- both NorCal and SoCal -- are now live on Better BNC, and you can start uploading entries now. The site is the same as past years: https://betternewspapercontest.com/login. The contest entry deadline is at 9 p.m. PDT June 30, 2023. Update: Extension through July 5 at 9 p.m.

As usual, here are some important things to pay attention to:

CATEGORY CHANGES: After beta testing, the podcast/audio news category is ready to go. Removed is the category for student-designed advertisements, which consistently the past few years has seen fewer entries than any other category.

Click here for the guidelines for each contest. You can also click the button on the left-hand side.

ENTRY HEADLINES: As a reminder: The "headline" area of Better BNC should NOT be the actual headline of the story or name of the entry. Instead, include your three-digit college code in the label/title of the entry. Also include the entry category and the entry number (No. 1 or No. 2). Depending on your school code and category of the entry, it should look something like this: 199- Feature Story - 1. (Replace the "199" with your own college's code.) You can find your college code here: https://jacconline.org/college-codes/ We were MUCH better about this during the state contest, and the judges really appreciated the consistency. Thanks a ton for your diligence to this!

 TWO-YEAR RULE: For several years now, JACC has had the "two-year rule" in place. We ask member schools to enforce this rule and impose it on their own entries. For example, if a student won a first-through-fourth place or meritorious/unranked award in a publication or on-the-spot contest during or before 2021 Regional Conference, that student CANNOT compete in publication or on-the-spot contests as part of the 2023 Regional or later conference in the same class of contests. Classes of contests, as opposed to categories, include Writing/Editing, Graphic Design, Photography and Multimedia. Students may continue to compete in other classes of contests. The rule applies to all competitions (i.e., both publications contests and on-the-spot contests, regardless of which competition the student won the award). If you have any questions on this, please let me know. 

PANDEMIC AND NEWSPAPER GE: Because of the ongoing pandemic, we extended our temporary change to the rule for the Newspaper General Excellence contest. The usual rule requires a minimum of eight (8) print issues during the eligibility period to enter this category. That has been temporarily reduced to from 8 to 3 issues printed and/or posted on Issuu, or a similar platform, as print-designed newspapers, the number of issues required for entry. Note that the print-designed issues do not have to have been distributed in print this year to enter the contest, they may have been distributed electronically. But they must have been designed as broadsheet or tabloid print products as distinguished from an online news site. This contest requires a set of three complete issues.

“COMMENTS” AREA: I had a few judges contact me over the past couple contests addressing the “comments” area. Please do NOT use the “comments” area of an entry to divulge personal details about an entrant or to reveal details about a story (such as reporting efforts or roadblocks overcome by student journalists, etc.) that are not apparent in the entry itself. In short, some judges are worried about some entries trying to skew results by giving judges this kind of backstory about a particular story, or student journalist, along with the entry. This is not the role of the “comments” area, which should only be used for clarifying details about the entry itself. Most schools have been great about not misusing this area, so if this doesn’t sound like something you do, then great – keep doing what you’re doing!

ENTRY PARTICULARS: The eligibility period for this contest is July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, the school year. Please remember that the contest entry site accepts writing entries as clips (cropped PDFs of the stories as they appeared in the print edition), or links to the stories in the online edition. Don’t submit Word or other similar document formats, or PDFs of Word documents. Photo entries are JPEGs with embedded captions, and entrants are asked to reproduce the caption in the caption field in the online entry form. Pages are submitted as PDFs, and issues are submitted as links to the complete edition/s on Issuu or another similar platform, or to their online edition as appropriate. Isolated page entries may be entered this way as well. If you find you have entered something in the wrong format, simply delete and re-upload the entry. Please note: For some categories, especially page design, we have had a problem with colleges providing a generic Issuu link rather than links to the specific issues being entered. Check the links from the Manage Entries page after submitting the entry to make sure they go to the right place. And note in the heading or comments section which issue dates you are submitting.

DOUBLE-CHECK: Don’t forget to double-check before you are finished entering that all your entries are attached. You can see whether files were successfully uploaded or linked by checking your Manage Entries page. If we have the time, we try to notify each of the impacted colleges but since the regional deadline is during summer and people may be in and out of town, you should plan enough time in your entry process to double-check your own entries to make sure everything is there. In addition, if you have plans to update your website over the summer, it may be better to submit your contest entries as PDFs rather than links. While links are faster to upload since they take no special preparation, judges may end up with broken links from changes to publication sites. If they can't access the entry, they can’t judge it.

CONTEST ENTRY FEE: The contest entry fee for both the state and regional publication contests is $100 each and the Wild Apricot event site is live for member colleges to generate contest fee invoices http://jaocc.wildapricot.org/. The contest entry fee deadline is also June 30, 2023. This deadline may be satisfied by creating a contest fee invoice in Wild Apricot even if it takes your Business Office longer to process payment. If you are one of the JACC member colleges that is going to opt to pre-pay contest entry fees this summer as part of a 2023-24 membership bundle ($500 membership fee plus $200 for the state and regional contests), you do not need to generate an entry fee invoice. If you don’t know whether you opted for the bundle or paid standard membership, you can check your account in Wild Apricot, or contact Joe Wirt at CNPA, which manages our organization ([email protected]).

JUDGES: One of the responsibilities of entering JACC contests is helping to provide judges to evaluate entries. Thanks to all of you, we have created a list of judges that have been suggested over the past several years that we have been working from, but we would like to add to that list because not everyone can continue to judge our contests twice a year, and some of the contact information is no longer current. So if you have any suggestions of new judges, we would really appreciate it. Regionals are particularly taxing because we have double the number of categories. We will be assigning judges in the following broad categories: Design, General Excellence, Magazine, Multimedia, Photo and Writing. Most categories require only a couple hours of evaluation time. General Excellence categories require a bit more as we ask GE judges to complete evaluation forms to score publications based on specific criteria, so if you know anyone who would be willing to judge GE specifically, that would be awesome. Please send along the name and contact information of someone you have confirmed would like to help with judging, and the broad category/ies they would like to judge to Patrick Schmiedt ([email protected]) as soon as possible. We prefer working journalism professionals, and those who have recently retired may have time to spare. Ask those you know or have networked with. Former JACC alums now working in the field always do a wonderful job, too, as do retired journalism professors no longer connected with a JACC journalism program.

PASSWORD ISSUES: If you encounter issues remembering your login and password, here's a tip — the login to the Better BNC site is by specific contest so some folks have two different logins and passwords, one for the state contest and one for regionals. If you try the login/PW combination you used for state last year and it does not work, try the one you used for regionals. If that fails, shoot me an email and I will look it up for you. If you cannot reach me, you can start a Trouble Ticket with Better BNC.

Finally: Questions? Let me know. I'm happy and here to help however I can. 

And that’s it for now! Please let me know if you have questions or encounter any contest entry problems. Take care and, if you celebrate, have a wonderful summer break.

Patrick Schmiedt
Professor, Citrus College"