DURHAM, NC (January 22, 2008) - The National Press Photographers Association's long-standing and popular Monthly News Clip Contest is going digital beginning with the January 2008 entries, NPPA announced today.
The MNCC's new format should be easier and faster for entrants, judges, and contest chairs alike.
"Going digital makes this a better contest, and that's the goal," NPPA executive director Jim Straight said today. "Digital will let us run this contest 'on time' and in today's digital world that's important. As an unexpected result, it will also create more space in News Photographer magazine for more stories, photographs, and original content. The magazine is consistently listed as one of the members' top benefits, and the MNCC contest has been an important part of News Photographer over the years, and this advancement lets us make the best of both worlds for the contest and the magazine."
"Since getting elected, it has been one of my top priorities that the contest go digital," NPPA president Tony Overman said. "It took longer than we wanted, but NPPA has finally switched the last of its national photography contests online. Entry will be easier, judging should go faster, and publishing all winners will be immediate. One of the biggest problems of the old contest was that newspaper and magazine clips were unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) rewarded for good presentation. That’s something over which most photographers have little or no control."
For years the contest has required that participants "clip" their photographs from their publication and mail the paper entry to a Regional contest chair. Once each 11 NPPA Regions were judged by Regional judges, the top winners in each category were mailed to a National MNCC clip chairperson who had the responsibility of finding another set of judges to pick the National winning clips. The process was cumbersome, time consuming, and by the time large envelopes of clips were mailed back and forth across the country the reporting of winners' names and displaying their photographs could take up to a year.
That won't be the case now that the MNCC is going digital. Entering the MNCC and judging and displaying the winners will all be online. Some of the top winners will still be published in News Photographer magazine each month, editor Donald R. Winslow said, but only one or two of the most compelling images as double-trucks or as Opening Shots features instead of the 10 to 11 pages the MNCC winners have been requiring up until now.
"The MNCC winners will be of more use to members and readers, educationally and as a visual tool, grouped together in galleries online," Winslow said. "Imagine being a student photographer, or a teacher, anywhere in the world, and being able to go into a gallery and look at all the Spot News winners for the last few years, or all of the Sports or Feature winners, clicking through great picture after great picture. Following NPPA's mission of education, this really makes great use of our MNCC winners as a teaching resource, and it also lets me as an editor 'cherry pick' some great pictures to use in News Photographer magazine without having to dedicate 120 pages per year just for MNCC winning images.
"I know that, in the past, members have had a great attachment to seeing their winning photographs published in the magazine, and that some will probably not like the fact that the contest is going digital, but as caretakers of NPPA's resources, and following our educational mission, and searching for ways to make best use of both our digital publishing capabilities and our print resources, this seems like a great solution to me," Winslow said. "Plus it always bugged me to be running photographs that were, while outstanding, more than a year old. This way, with a digital contest, the winning photographs and the results will be published online as soon as the judging is complete and I'll get to use the very best images in print.
"After having seen the success Mark Edelson had with taking the quarterly Best Use Of Photography contest online, and being able to go through all of those great winning pages instantly in an online gallery and seeing the pictures and the winning page designs, I think NPPA members are going to really enjoy seeing the MNCC winners in the same way," Winslow said.
"That contest faced similar hurdles, going online and going digital. After winners were picked, the challenge was how to display the winners. Now the online display of .JPEGs made from Adobe Acrobat .PDF files of the winning pages has made the quarterly BUP contest an awesome Internet resource and the turnaround from entry to winners is very fast. I hope NPPA members realize quickly how taking MNCC digital will have the same results."
"After we take the MNCC digital, we'll work with Stephen Sample, NPPA's information technology director, to put the past winning MNCC photographs that have run in the magazine in the last few years into the online archive as well, so that we'll have some 'legacy' images in the galleries to start with and to give the collection some 'depth' not too long after launch," Winslow added.
The MNCC digital contest page is here, and the rules are online here.
The general entry deadline will be the 7th of each month (so pictures taken in February will be due by March 7, pictures taken in March will be April 7, etc.).
The January 2008 will have a longer entry period to allow people to get acquainted with the new system, Sample said. The January MNCC contest will open for entries on February 1 and run for three weeks.
Until then, NPPA members can get a preview of the new MNCC contest to explore the interface and learn the ropes. Pictures uploaded before February 1 will not be entered in the official 2008 contest, so members can explore the system without worrying about whether their captions are perfect, or whether they've picked the absolute best pictures for their 9 entries.
Once the entry period ends, judges can log in individually and on the contest page they can rank the entries. The individual judges' votes will be combined into a finalists' list, and the judges can then walk through the finalists as a group and discuss the entries, resolve ties, and come up with the final ranking and winners.
Then when the judges are finished, the Regional MNCC chairs can log in and confirm the winners. When that happens, point totals and winners' Web pages will be updated automatically.
