(March 3, 2005) – The NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism 2005 contest judging started February 25 and continued for two days at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication in Athens, OH, where judges selected winners in the Editing and in the Best Use of Photography categories for newspapers and magazines. The next round of judging began March 13 for the Television Photography categories at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburgh, FL, and Still Photography and Web site judging will start March 20 at Poynter and continues through March 25.
In Athens, the Editing and Best Use of Pictures categories were judged by Michel du Cille, Scott Mc Kiernan, Kurt Mutchler, and Annie O’Neill. Stan Alost, an Ohio University School of Visual Communication (VisCom) assistant professor, organized and oversaw the judging at OU and assisted the panel of award-winning and industry-leading professionals as they picked winners in each category. Terry Eiler, an NPPA Best Of Photojournalism contest committee member and the VisCom director, was also on hand for the judging.
Michel du Cille is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and he’s been the photography editor for The Washington Post since 1988. He has a journalism degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, and a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University. His first Pulitzer was for spot news while he was a staff photographer for The Miami Herald and it was shared with staff photographer Carol Guzy for their coverage of the Nevado Del Ruiz volcano in Colombia in 1985. His second Pulitzer was for feature photography in 1988 for his essay in Tropic magazine on crack cocaine addicts in a Miami, FL, housing project referred to as “The Graveyard.”
Kurt Mutchler is a veteran picture editor at National Geographic magazine where, for more than a decade, he’s produced cover stories on wide-ranging topics such as life beyond earth, the war in Iraq, to science and the mechanics of the solar system’s sun. He’s also an adjunct professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington, DC, teaching photojournalism. Mutchler is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Ohio State University and he was a staff photographer and picture editor for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, LA, before moving to National Geographic.
Scott Mc Kiernan is the director and founder of ZUMA Press in Laguna Beach, CA. His career in photojournalism spans three decades as a photographer, an editor, an agent, and now as a publisher. ZUMA is one of the world’s largest independent photography agencies. His early beginnings in art and studies at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut and at the School of Visual Arts, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the News School of Social Research led to exhibits of his work at art galleries in New York, but his childhood love of photography moved him into the media where he shot assignments for Paris Match, Stern, Newsweek and People Weekly. Eventually represented by the famous agency Black Star, he photographed stories around the world averaging 300 assignments annually before founding ZUMA in 1995. ZUMA has grown to a staff of 50 currently representing more than 900 photojournalists.
Annie O’Neill is the current Knight Fellow at Ohio University pursuing a master’s degree in Visual Communication. She’s a staff photojournalist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where she’s been a consistent award-winner for a decade, including Pennsylvania Photographer of the Year twice, Pittsburgh Photographer of the Year three times, and numerous individual awards in Pictures of the Year International and the Society of Newspaper Design contests. Her first book, Unquiet Ruin – A Photographic Excavation, was published in 2001 and she’s currently working on a new book, The Gift of Work.
The Best Of Photojournalism 2005 contest committee is chaired by Harry Walker, director of the Knight Ridder/Tribune Photo Service in Washington, DC. The contest committee has as its members Joe Elbert, the assistant managing editor for photography for The Washington Post; Kenneth F. Irby, the visual journalism group leader for The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL; Terry Eiler, director and co-founder of the School of Visual Communication for Ohio University in Athens, OH; Keith Jenkins, photography editor for The Washington Post Magazine; and Clyde Mueller, the director of photography for the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Ohio University hosts the editing judging as part of its sponsorship of the Best Of Photojournalism contest. BOP contest sponsors also include Canon, Nikon, and Olympus cameras, along with The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, hesketh.com, ibiblio.org, and MerlinOne.
Walker announced earlier this month the committee's selection of judges for this year's Best Of Photojournalism 2005 Still Photography categories. The judges are Victor Vaughan, assistant managing editor for presentation for The Arizona Daily Star; Gary Hershorn, news editor for pictures, the Americas, for Reuters based in Washington, DC; Bonnie Jo Mount, deputy managing editor for presentation and online for the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC; Hal Buell, retired chief editor for photography for the Associated Press; and Ruth Fremson, a staff photographer for The New York Times.
Jenkins is coordinator of the Best Of Photojournalism 2005’s Best of the Web contest categories and Jenkins has organized the judges for this year’s Web categories. They are: Shawn Greene, multimedia projects editor for the Miami Herald and www.miamiherald.com; Andrew DeVigal, an assistant professor at San Francisco State University who teaches visual and online journalism and who is the founder of DeVigal Design; Dan Habib, photography editor for The Concord Monitor and creator of the multi-media documentary “Teen Sexuality in a Culture of Confusion”; and Maria Bunai, the photography editor for Time magazine’s online edition, www.time.com, who formerly worked in the illustrations department for National Geographic and was a photography editor at America Online. Bunai’s been a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute, and she was one of the judges for the first Best Of Photojournalism Web competition in 2002.
Michael Harrity of KUSA-TV 9News in Denver, CO, co-coordinator of the Best Of Photojournalism 2005's Television contest and judging, announced that two of the Television Editing category judges will be Paul Pytlowany, a special projects photographer and editor for CBS/UPN in Detroit, MI, and Brandi Paulson, a special projects editor for WKYC-TV in Cleveland, OH. The Television Photography judges are: Kurt Austin, a photojournalist for KGW-TV in Portland, OR; Richard Essex, a reporter/assignment editor for WTHR-TV in Indianapolis, IN; Scott Hedeen, a photojournalist for WXIA-TV in Atlanta, GA; Katrina McCann, a photojournalist for KY3-TV in Springfield, MO; and Kenny Reynolds, a photojournalist for KTHV-TV in Little Rock, AR. NPPA president Bob Gould is on site to assist with the judging, which began March 13.
