In case anyone cares, here’s the email I just sent to Seattlest and SeattleMetroBlogger about the Weekly winning 54 SPJ Awards…

dear dan & josh,

how come the stranger didn’t win any SPJs? we don’t make any concerted effort to enter these contests. frankly i think the SPJ’s are bullshit. some staffers would like to have SPJ awards on their resumes, and they’re free to enter their work, but i don’t push staffers to enter or make any full-court press on the SPJ front. i see them as a distraction from the bidness of putting out the newspaper. the Weekly, by contrast, floods the contest with entries.

four edit folks, all in the news department, chose to enter this year — and one won an honorable mention. swell. the weekly enters in every category. their press release implies that they beat us in a head-to-head match up in 54 categories. not true. we didn’t enter any arts pieces, any non-news columns, any design stuff.

also, there were two SPJ awards passed out the other day: Western Washington, and Alt Weeklies in Region 10. we didn't enter anything in Western Washington, which means the Weekly won match-ups in contests with... uh... dunno, actually. but they beat all the other weekly papers in Western Washington that aren't The Stranger.

so this from the weekly's press release...

"Among alt-weeklies in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, the
next-biggest winner was Portland's Willamette Week with 11. Seattle Weekly's
direct competitor, The Stranger, won an honorable mention...."

...is a distortion/lie. save the six entries, the weekly wasn't competing against The Stranger, but against the Sequim Gazette, Puget Sound Business Journal, The Business Examiner of Tacoma, The Peninsula Gateway, Magnolia News, the West Seattle Herald, etc.

the SPJs are a racket -- you have to pay to enter each category in which you want to compete, and they seem to go out of their way to think up categories -- business news/feature, sports reporting, headlines (!). photography alone has five categories -- portrait, photo essays, feature, spot news, general news.

the SPJs are a scam -- and they're a scam that suits the Weekly's needs, not ours. as far as i'm concerned we're going to keep breaking national news -- Sandeep Kaushik's Microsoft story, A.J. Gussman's story about pregnant women in Washington state not being able to get divorced, my pieces on drug support payments -- and pour our energies into our paper, not into some bogus, resume-padding contest. we're focused on putting out the bigger, more interesting, better written, more fun Seattle weekly paper, not lining up Lucite.

so why don't we enter more pieces in the SPJs? frankly, in addition to being a scam, i don't think the SPJ judging is legit. please read the enclosed email, below. it's from the local SPJ folks begging people to come on down and be judges in the SPJ contest. apparently anyone can waltz in the door and be an SPJ judge -- i was tempted to go down, take some stories into the bathroom, toss them in the air, and give awards to the ones that landed in the toilet. the judging process is a kind of roulette, a game of chance, and so the weekly enters tons of shit and drags home some awards. we don't enter much, and take home few awards. but i don't want to submit our editorial product to be judged by any ol' mope who shows up at the SPJ "judging contest party."

finally, the reason the weekly crows so loud about these contests is because they have so little else to brag about. they can have their plaques. i'd rather have The Stranger.

dan

•••

Delivered-To: savagelove@mail.thestranger.com
From: enews@cincyspj.org
To: mail@savagelove.net
Subject: ROUND TWO: SPJ judging spills into second week

ROUND TWO: Riddled with guilt because you missed Wednesday‚s Society
of Professional Journalists contest judging party? Not to worry ˆ
we‚re doing it again!

There are still several categories left to be judged and with last
week‚s short notice many people couldn‚t make the shindig. Easy to
understand. So, come Thursday, April 28 we'll do it again beginning
at 5:30 p.m. and going until 9 p.m. or later at 1222 Race Street,
Apt. 6, across from Music Hall.

There's plenty of on-street parking. We're judging contest entries
from the Pacific Northwest (and our entries go to them for judging).

Come for the entire time or just long enough to do a little judging.
There will be food, drinks, merriment and lots of opinions.

For a map or directions, visit http://www.cincyspj.org or call (513)
621-NEWS.

P.S. If you cannot or could not make the party, you can still judge
a category. Please contact Joe Wessels at (513) 621-NEWS to have a
category delivered to you. All entries must be returned by April 29,
2005.