SABEW's 14th annual Best in Business contest approaches

By Jill Jorden Spitz

Contest committee chair

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual Best in Business contest opens in January for work published in 2007.

All entries are due by Feb. 1, 2008. The entry process will again be all electronic, with URLs in addition to PDFs allowed.

The contest committee is working on new entry categories that will be announced soon. Watch for announcements on the Web site.

In the meantime, the committee announces the following mandatory dates in these categories.

-- In the daily Section general excellence contest, members must submit their sections from Wednesday, April 18 and Tuesday, July> 17. Business stories that ran on A1 or elsewhere in the paper on those days may be entered as well. A third mandatory date is to be announced after Jan. 1. Members must also submit three optional days' work (a Sunday, a Monday or Thursday and a Friday or Saturday) and an optional special section.

-- Columnists must submit their work from Friday, Jan. 12, or the first column published AFTER that date. Columnists also enter three columns of their choice.

-- In the Weeklies contest, members must submit the issue published between Sunday, April 15 and Saturday, April 21; and the issue published between Sunday, July 15 and Saturday, July 21. A third mandatory date is to be announced after Jan. 1.

-- The student contest will be broken into two divisions: stories written for student publications and stories written for professional publications.

You must be a member or included in an institutional membership of SABEW to enter the contest. Please check the Web site for membership status or to join SABEW.

Do you want to solicit judges? Other volunteers?? Questions? Please contact contest committee chair Jill Jorden Spitz at jspitz@azstarnet.com or 520-573-4177.

Posted Nov. 6, 2007