By Betsy Russell
For the second straight year, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted us to shift our gala annual awards banquet to an enjoy-from-home online contest reveal instead, and it’s coming up on Saturday, May 1st at noon MT.
You can still dress up in your finery if you choose, and please feel free to share the news about your successes online with the hashtag #idahopressclub. We’ve all worked incredibly hard in the past year under extremely challenging conditions, and the accolades for doing good journalism in Idaho are extraordinarily well-deserved.
Our contest includes divisions ranging from daily and weekly publications to television, online journalism, photography, audio, all-media awards, public relations, and student journalists’ work. And even in this difficult year, we had more than 1,000 entries across all divisions and categories, beating last year’s level. Our contest was judged by our peers around the country, just as we help judge journalism contests for other states. The competition was stiff – some categories had more than two dozen entries competing for the awards!
Whether you won a first-place plaque, took second or third place, won an honorable mention, or just competed in this talented field, your hard work is deserving of praise. On May 1, we honor all Idaho journalists. Your work has kept Idahoans informed when they needed it most, and helped spread light in a very dark year.
On May 1, just go to idahopressclub.org at noon MT (or any time thereafter), to find out the results of this year’s “Best of 2020” Annual Awards Contest. Full results will be unveiled there for all divisions and categories.
The actual plaques and certificates will either be shipped or delivered to you or your newsroom in the coming weeks; if you have any questions about that, our executive director, Martha Borchers, can help.
So check the results, fire off a tweet, lift a cup, snap a selfie, take a victory lap, cheer your colleagues, and celebrate on Saturday. And don’t forget the hashtag (#idahopressclub)!
Betsy Z. Russell is the Boise bureau chief for the Idaho Press and is the president of the Idaho Press Club.
