The statewide contest is now live on Better BNC, and you can start uploading entries. The site is the same as past years: https://betternewspapercontest.com/login. The contest entry deadline is at 9 p.m. PDT Jan. 15, 2025. Winners will be announced at the ACP Spring College Media Conference in a separate JACC-specific ceremony.
AGAIN: The contest entry deadline is at 9 p.m. PDT Wednesday, January 15, 2025.
Details on the contest and all the categories are on the JACC website: https://jacconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023-24-JACC-Publication-Contests.pdf (The pdf says it is for 2023-2024, but it is still valid.)
We’ve gotten some feedback from judges about a few categories – particularly some of our art/design categories – and we’ve made changes to hopefully facilitate a smoother entry process. Please note the changes to the uploading instructions below!
UPLOADS FOR GRAPHICS/DESIGN CATEGORIES
Contest entry guidelines for several Graphics/Design division categories have changed. The categories affected include:
- Photo Illustration
- Illustration
- Infographic
- Editorial cartoon
- Magazine Illustration (in the Magazine division)
For those categories, judges have asked entrants to upload not only the image/graphic itself but ALSO the story with which it ran. That can be a PDF of the page it ran on OR a link to the story online. You’ll notice that those categories have two places to upload files. One is for the entry, while the other is for the full story. Don’t upload two different graphics to the same entry! There’s also a place for you to submit a link to an online article.
OTHER CATEGORIES THAT ARE OUTLIERS
For our regional contests that we awarded in the fall, judges also brought attention to a couple contests that had some trouble. One was the dual categories of photo story-essay (in the Graphics/Design division) and online photo story-essay (in the Multimedia division). Please remember that photo story-essay is a category for PRINT page designs – single pages, double trucks or multiple-page essays are all acceptable. Any online slideshows or galleries should be submitted to the multimedia category Online Photo Story-Essay.
That said, the MAGAZINE division Photo Story-Essay submissions can either be print or online photo essays.
The writing category that had the most disqualifications was column writing. For that contest, we should be submitting TWO opinion pieces from the SAME author. Do not submit a pro-con series, columns from different reporters, only one column, or more than two columns. Judges saw several such entries that didn't fit the contest guidelines.
We will always do what we can to resubmit entries to their proper categories, when possible – for example, if you submit something to column writing with only one writing entry, we will move it to opinion story ONLY IF your school doesn't already have two entries in that category. Otherwise, we have to disqualify such entries.
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).
Here's a screenshot to help:
The headline portion of the entry should look like this, replacing the “199” with your college’s code:
199- Feature Story - 1
NOT: 199 - Feature Story - 1 Horse carriages are the future
NOT: 199 - Feature Story - Horse carriages are the future
NOT: 199 - Feature Story - 1 Horse carriages are the future By Patrick Schmiedt
NOT: 199 - Feature Story - By Patrick Schmiedt
NOT: 199 - Horse carriages are the future
NOT: Horse carriages are the future
NOT: HORSE CARRIAGES ARE THE FUTURE
You can find your college code here: http://jacconline.org/college-codes/
This method of submitting entry “headlines” helps the judges significantly to navigate BetterBNC smoothly and consistently. When “headlines” on entries are all different with each school, it’s harder both for me as the coordinator and judges as, well, judges to navigate the back end of the site.
ELIGIBILITY
The eligibility period for this contest is anything that published between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2024, the calendar year.
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 2023 State Convention, that student CANNOT compete in publication or on-the-spot contests as part of the 2025 State Convention 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.
WRITING ENTRIES
When submitting a writing entry as a PDF, please crop the pdf attachments to minimum-sized rectangles that include just the entry, as opposed to a full-page of a newspaper. Don’t submit Word or other similar document formats, or PDFs of Word documents.
PHOTO ENTRIES
Photo entries are JPEGs with embedded captions, and entrants are asked to reproduce the caption in the caption field in the online entry form. And, hey, Photoshop users: With the latest update to Photoshop, we’re seeing metadata stripped from certain exports. Make sure the cutlines are there even after exporting!
DESIGN ENTRIES
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. 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. If you’re submitting entries that are shared to Issuu, make sure the entries can be seen by someone who is not logged in. With Issuu's new guidelines, we have run into accessibility problems for numerous entries in both the regional and state contests the past year.
The contest manager has had success with the magazine entries by just uploading the PDF through our website’s File Manager, bypassing our content management system (we use WordPress) to do so. If you have the ability to do this, it works!
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 state deadline is at a time when many schools are on break 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, 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.
MESSED UP?
If you find you have entered something in the wrong format or the wrong category, simply delete and re-upload the entry. Just be sure to do so before the entry deadline.
“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. This is not the role of the “comments” area, which should only be used for clarifying details about the entry itself.
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 Jan. 15, 2025. 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 2024-25 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 Cecelia Drake at CNPA, which manages our organization ([email protected]).
PASSWORD ISSUES
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 regionals last time around and it does not work, try the one you used for state. 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.
JUDGES
In short, we need some more! We brought on several new judges in the past year thanks to your help. That said, if you have any suggestions of new judges, we would really appreciate it. 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 as soon as possible. (You can find his email on the listserv version of this message.) 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.
Finally: Questions? Again, contact Patrick via our listserv, and/or post your questions to our Facebook group.