Sneak Peek at new Best in Business Categories

By Jill Jorden Spitz

SABEW board member

It's time to start planning for SABEW's 2007 Best in Business contest.

We have two new divisions his year, with categories for online and magazine business journalism. Here's a sneak peak at the new categories:

Magazine categories:

Magazine cover story

Honors outstanding reporting, writing and analysis in a package featured on the magazine's cover. Entries can include up to seven stories or related elements from a single issue. Judges will consider the explanatory or investigative quality of the reporting and writing as well as originality in narrative presentation.

Magazine general excellence

The general excellence contest is limited to business, economics or personal finance magazines. Publications will submit three issues, one of which will be a mandatory issue. Here's how the mandatory date will work: Weekly or bi-weekly publications should submit the issue that falls closest to the mandatory date. The issue date should not fall past the mandatory date. Monthly, bimonthly and quarterly publications should submit the issue that encompasses work from that month.

Magazine Website

Because of differences in resources, approach and deadlines, we have created a separate category for general excellence among magazine Web sites. However, magazines choose whether they wish to enter the competition for "best news site" or best magazine site. In all other categories of the online division, magazine entries will be judged against other media.

Honors outstanding business magazine web sites. Both stand-alone business news sites and business web pages affiliated with general-interest publications are eligible to enter. Sites will be judged based on how well they make use of online elements. Judges will give extra weight to sites that take best advantage of the online medium in their presentation of elements such as breaking news, special projects, slide shows, audio/video reports, blogs and interactive features such as forums and polls. They also will give special consideration to elements that are exclusive to the Web and stories that are broken on the Web. Judges will give less weight to sites that simply post online versions of a print product.

At least one person on the staff of the business news site or affiliated news organization must be a SABEW member in order to enter this category. Include the site's main URL and up to three additional URLs within the site. Entry also may include a letter of up to one page explaining why your site should be considered.

Online categories:

Business news site general excellence

Honors outstanding business news web sites. Both stand-alone business news sites and business web pages affiliated with general news organizations are eligible to enter. Sites will be judges based on how well they make use of online elements. Judges will give extra weight to sites that take best advantage of the online medium in their presentation of elements such as breaking news, special projects, slide shows, audio/video reports, blogs and interactive features such as forums and polls. They also will give special consideration to elements that are exclusive to the Web and stories that are broken on the Web. Judges will give less weight to sites that simply post online versions of a print product. At least one person on the staff of the business news site or affiliated news organization must be a SABEW member in order to enter this category. Include the site's main URL and up to three additional URLs within the site. Entry also may include a letter of up to one page explaining why your site should be considered.

Breaking news

Honors outstanding coverage of breaking business news. Entry should include all elements of a breaking news story published online over a 24-hour period. Entry may include only elements published online before they appeared in any other medium. Judges will give greater weight to UNANTICIPATED events rather than anticipated events that allowed the staff to plan ahead.

Creative use of online

Honors cutting edge ways of creating and delivering online business news. Examples include e-mail newsletters, breaking news blasts, features delivered to users of mobile devices and user-generate content.

Project

Honors in-depth, well-rounded packages that appear either online only or feature online-only elements that advance and enhance a project that appeared in another medium. Judges will consider the overall package, and how online elements such as interactive graphics, slideshows, audio/video reports and interactive features contribute to it. Entry should include a main project URL and up to three additional URLs from the same project.

Blog

Honors outstanding business-related blogs produced by SABEW members. Can be produced as part of a business news site or produced and posted independently. Judges will consider four days' worth of postings: two of the writers' choice (all entries posted on each of those days will be judged), as well as all entries posted on the following dates : Thursday, April 19 and Monday, Aug. 6. If there were no postings on a mandatory date, enter all postings from the next day AFTER the mandatory date in which the blogger posted. Entry may include reader comments posted on each of the four days judged. Entrants should submit a URL for each of the four days, or create a single URL that holds postings from all four of the contest days.

Audio/video report

Honors outstanding audio/video reporting. Entries must focus on business news, must be produced for the Web and must air there before they appear on any other medium. Entrants should submit a URL for the audio/video report.

The contest will open at the beginning of 2008 with an entry deadline of Feb. 1, 2008. The entry process will again be all electronic, although this year we will will allow URLs in addition to PDFs.

If you are entering the section general excellence contest, the magazine general excellence contest or the blogging contest, these are the mandatory dates you'll need to enter:

Section general excellence contest: Wednesday, April 18, Tuesday, July 17, and a third date will be announced later

Magazine general excellence contest: August issue (if the publication did not publish in August, enter the next issue published AFTER August.)

Blogging contest: Thursday, April 19 and Monday, Aug. 6
(If there were no posts on those days, enter all posts from the next day AFTER the mandatory dates.)

Questions? Please contact contest chair Jill Jorden Spitz at jspitz@azstarnet.com or 520-573-4177.

Posted Oct. 26, 2007