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By Michael Harvey, Managing Editor, Carolina Communiqué
STC Carolina recently celebrated getting a Chapter of Excellence award. One of Anjela Dukes’ goals for the coming year is to go the next step and earn a Chapter of Distinction award. The chapter certainly has the talent and resources to get it.
To be eligible for the Chapter of Excellence award, we are required to enter our chapter’s newsletter in Society’s Newsletter Competition. According to this year’s announcement, “winning an award in the STC Newsletter Competition is a checklist item for a chapter to receive a Chapter of Distinction Award.”
But our newsletter cannot ever earn an award.
Surprised? So was I. I didn’t know we were permanently ineligible for a newsletter award until I queried Thomas P. Barnett, the newsletter competition chairman, about the feedback we got from the judges of the 2003-2004 competition.
Here’s an excerpt from my first e-mail to Thomas:
Thank you for the feedback we received in the recent STC Newsletter Competition. We intend to use these comments to improve our newsletter.
Still, I have to say that I’m puzzled by the fact that we didn’t get an Award of Merit. The final score required for an Award of Merit was between 70-84.4% — our final score was 76%. The positive feedback from the judges greatly outweighed the negative.
I also have to confess that I find the…evaluations baffling….I do not understand Judge #1’s decision to give us a (rating of fair) on “Design and Delivery: Design” (for three issues), …when this same judge commented “layout is inviting to the reader; like the way you changed from two to three column format; nice graphics and great pictures; good use of color.”
…We intend to enter the newsletter in the 2004-2005 competition. We will address “fundamental elements” and “recommended topics” as best we can. I hope that when we get our 2004-2005 results, we will find it easier to understand judges’ ratings.
Tom’s response was as follows:
The rules for the Newsletter Competition were set up decades ago and have been modified periodically since then. One rule that hasn’t changed in the past 15 years regards publication frequency. Up until just a few years ago, if a newsletter did not meet the publication frequency requirements, it was simply not evaluated. That has changed so that all newsletters can receive feedback on their work.
Ineligible newsletters still cannot receive awards. Your newsletter did not meet the minimum requirement for publication frequency, and therefore it was not eligible to receive an award.
…Why is publication frequency important? Newsletters are used to communicate with the members of the community they serve. If they communicate infrequently they are doing less of a service to those members than newsletters that communicate more frequently. (Also) most editors know that it is easier to publish every two months than to publish every month; easier to publish quarterly than to published (sic) every other month. The work is less, but you also have much more time to work on content and design. …The competition could only require one issue per year, but that would be easy to create, with outstanding design and content. But what kind of service would you be giving to your community? And how would that be fair to those newsletters that publish frequently?
Regarding a judge giving you differing points on style for different issues: I really don’t know.
…The judges we obtain for the competition come from the pool of award-winner newsletters from competitions in the past. Many times we have excellent judges. Many times we do not. They are all volunteers and we put on a competition/evaluation as best we can.
…I entered our chapter newsletter four times in the competition. Although I won awards every time (including two Distinguished Awards), every year I disagreed with some of the comments made by the judges.
The message was clear: rules are rules. But the definition of “competition” is “the act of competing, as for profit or a prize.” How can this be a competition if some of the entries are, from the start, ineligible for a prize? Undaunted, I responded:
Thanks for your comments Tom. You make an important point about the need for chapters to communicate with their members.
Our chapter uses a non-traditional, three-tiered approach to communicate with its members. First, we offer two mailing lists to which members can subscribe: an announcement mailing list, to which chapter event information is sent, and a discussion mailing list, which provides a forum for members to express opinions, share ideas, and interact with others. Second, we send through the U.S. mail a monthly announcement of upcoming events, e.g., the chapter meeting, SIG meetings, and training events. Third, we post to our chapter website the Carolina Communiqué, our quarterly “newsletter,” which focuses on thought-provoking articles of interest to chapter members. We wanted these articles to be the kind that members would want to take time reading, thinking about, and possibly responding to.
Perhaps we should enter our entire communication system in next year’s competition. We don’t just rely on the traditional newsletter to interact with our members.
What do you think? As STC undergoes its transformation, shouldn’t we be transforming how STC community members interact with one another? Could we present the STC Carolina communication system as a model for the “newsletter” of the future? I understand this would push against the limits of the competition, but haven’t we said that, to realize the transformation, we need “to ensure (that) STC’s use of technology is the most up-to-date possible and that it is used efficiently to meet the needs of its members?”
I appreciate your consideration.
To which Tom responded:
“Perhaps we should enter our entire communication system in next year’s competition. We don’t just rely on the traditional newsletter to interact with our members.”
Since the Newsletter Competition only evaluates newsletters, it cannot, as it is, evaluate a chapter or SIG communication system. The rules for the 2004-2005 are set, and they cannot accommodate this. However,...
“As STC undergoes its transformation, shouldn’t we be transforming how STC community members interact with one another?”
The Newsletter Competition Committee has discussed several topics along these lines, and several of these discussions took place before there was the Transformation. One is the creation of a chapter and SIG Web Site Competition. Another is evaluation of a chapter or SIG’s overall communication system, much like you have described.
The Newsletter Competition has just recently gone through a serious revaluation of the rules document, and as Beth Bailey, the new manager of the competition, can testify to, it takes a tremendous amount of thought, discussion, and brainstorming just to move what already exists toward a better competition in the near future.
… (What you suggest is) the right direction to go. It’s just not quite on the horizon yet.
Great thinking on your part.
Great thinking, but a newsletter is a newsletter.
And so that’s where we left it. We must enter Society’s newsletter competition for our chapter to be considered for an award. But our newsletter isn’t published frequently enough for it to be eligible for an award. But our newsletter will still be judged as if it were eligible. But even if we score high enough to warrant an award, we won’t get it. But it’s hard to tell what the evaluation scores mean. Where’s the value in all of this?
As I told Thomas, we will use feedback to improve our newsletter. And we will make whatever changes are required to continue to provide value to our readers. What’s disappointing to me is that the current system adheres to a 15-year old rule about publication frequency. Fifteen years ago, the World Wide Web didn’t exist. The Internet was just beginning to grow beyond its use as a research network. Lots of rules have changed since 1989. Why not this one? There has to be a way of considering publication frequency in the context of a chapter’s entire system of communicating with its members.
Entering the competition when we cannot really compete doesn’t seem fair to everyone who volunteers time to create content and shape it into an attractive package. It doesn’t seem fair to the judges, who, as Tom points out, “come from the pool of award-winner newsletters from competitions in the past” to voluntarily judge it. It doesn’t seem fair to our chapter that, because of this technicality, may not win a Chapter of Distinction award. I sincerely hope that this inequity will be addressed through STC’s transformation after not too much thought, discussion, and brainstorming.
- “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
- — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
STC Carolina recently celebrated getting a Chapter of Excellence award. One of Anjela Dukes’ goals for the coming year is to go the next step and earn a Chapter of Distinction award. The chapter certainly has the talent and resources to get it.
To be eligible for the Chapter of Excellence award, we are required to enter our chapter’s newsletter in Society’s Newsletter Competition. According to this year’s announcement, “winning an award in the STC Newsletter Competition is a checklist item for a chapter to receive a Chapter of Distinction Award.”
But our newsletter cannot ever earn an award.
Surprised? So was I. I didn’t know we were permanently ineligible for a newsletter award until I queried Thomas P. Barnett, the newsletter competition chairman, about the feedback we got from the judges of the 2003-2004 competition.
Here’s an excerpt from my first e-mail to Thomas:
Thank you for the feedback we received in the recent STC Newsletter Competition. We intend to use these comments to improve our newsletter.
Still, I have to say that I’m puzzled by the fact that we didn’t get an Award of Merit. The final score required for an Award of Merit was between 70-84.4% — our final score was 76%. The positive feedback from the judges greatly outweighed the negative.
I also have to confess that I find the…evaluations baffling….I do not understand Judge #1’s decision to give us a (rating of fair) on “Design and Delivery: Design” (for three issues), …when this same judge commented “layout is inviting to the reader; like the way you changed from two to three column format; nice graphics and great pictures; good use of color.”
…We intend to enter the newsletter in the 2004-2005 competition. We will address “fundamental elements” and “recommended topics” as best we can. I hope that when we get our 2004-2005 results, we will find it easier to understand judges’ ratings.
Tom’s response was as follows:
The rules for the Newsletter Competition were set up decades ago and have been modified periodically since then. One rule that hasn’t changed in the past 15 years regards publication frequency. Up until just a few years ago, if a newsletter did not meet the publication frequency requirements, it was simply not evaluated. That has changed so that all newsletters can receive feedback on their work.
Ineligible newsletters still cannot receive awards. Your newsletter did not meet the minimum requirement for publication frequency, and therefore it was not eligible to receive an award.
…Why is publication frequency important? Newsletters are used to communicate with the members of the community they serve. If they communicate infrequently they are doing less of a service to those members than newsletters that communicate more frequently. (Also) most editors know that it is easier to publish every two months than to publish every month; easier to publish quarterly than to published (sic) every other month. The work is less, but you also have much more time to work on content and design. …The competition could only require one issue per year, but that would be easy to create, with outstanding design and content. But what kind of service would you be giving to your community? And how would that be fair to those newsletters that publish frequently?
Regarding a judge giving you differing points on style for different issues: I really don’t know.
…The judges we obtain for the competition come from the pool of award-winner newsletters from competitions in the past. Many times we have excellent judges. Many times we do not. They are all volunteers and we put on a competition/evaluation as best we can.
…I entered our chapter newsletter four times in the competition. Although I won awards every time (including two Distinguished Awards), every year I disagreed with some of the comments made by the judges.
The message was clear: rules are rules. But the definition of “competition” is “the act of competing, as for profit or a prize.” How can this be a competition if some of the entries are, from the start, ineligible for a prize? Undaunted, I responded:
Thanks for your comments Tom. You make an important point about the need for chapters to communicate with their members.
Our chapter uses a non-traditional, three-tiered approach to communicate with its members. First, we offer two mailing lists to which members can subscribe: an announcement mailing list, to which chapter event information is sent, and a discussion mailing list, which provides a forum for members to express opinions, share ideas, and interact with others. Second, we send through the U.S. mail a monthly announcement of upcoming events, e.g., the chapter meeting, SIG meetings, and training events. Third, we post to our chapter website the Carolina Communiqué, our quarterly “newsletter,” which focuses on thought-provoking articles of interest to chapter members. We wanted these articles to be the kind that members would want to take time reading, thinking about, and possibly responding to.
Perhaps we should enter our entire communication system in next year’s competition. We don’t just rely on the traditional newsletter to interact with our members.
What do you think? As STC undergoes its transformation, shouldn’t we be transforming how STC community members interact with one another? Could we present the STC Carolina communication system as a model for the “newsletter” of the future? I understand this would push against the limits of the competition, but haven’t we said that, to realize the transformation, we need “to ensure (that) STC’s use of technology is the most up-to-date possible and that it is used efficiently to meet the needs of its members?”
I appreciate your consideration.
To which Tom responded:
“Perhaps we should enter our entire communication system in next year’s competition. We don’t just rely on the traditional newsletter to interact with our members.”
Since the Newsletter Competition only evaluates newsletters, it cannot, as it is, evaluate a chapter or SIG communication system. The rules for the 2004-2005 are set, and they cannot accommodate this. However,...
“As STC undergoes its transformation, shouldn’t we be transforming how STC community members interact with one another?”
The Newsletter Competition Committee has discussed several topics along these lines, and several of these discussions took place before there was the Transformation. One is the creation of a chapter and SIG Web Site Competition. Another is evaluation of a chapter or SIG’s overall communication system, much like you have described.
The Newsletter Competition has just recently gone through a serious revaluation of the rules document, and as Beth Bailey, the new manager of the competition, can testify to, it takes a tremendous amount of thought, discussion, and brainstorming just to move what already exists toward a better competition in the near future.
… (What you suggest is) the right direction to go. It’s just not quite on the horizon yet.
Great thinking on your part.
Great thinking, but a newsletter is a newsletter.
The message was clear: rules are rules. But the definition of “competition” is “the act of competing, as for profit or prize.” How can this be a competition if some of the entries are, from the start, ineligible for a prize?
As I told Thomas, we will use feedback to improve our newsletter. And we will make whatever changes are required to continue to provide value to our readers. What’s disappointing to me is that the current system adheres to a 15-year old rule about publication frequency. Fifteen years ago, the World Wide Web didn’t exist. The Internet was just beginning to grow beyond its use as a research network. Lots of rules have changed since 1989. Why not this one? There has to be a way of considering publication frequency in the context of a chapter’s entire system of communicating with its members.
Entering the competition when we cannot really compete doesn’t seem fair to everyone who volunteers time to create content and shape it into an attractive package. It doesn’t seem fair to the judges, who, as Tom points out, “come from the pool of award-winner newsletters from competitions in the past” to voluntarily judge it. It doesn’t seem fair to our chapter that, because of this technicality, may not win a Chapter of Distinction award. I sincerely hope that this inequity will be addressed through STC’s transformation after not too much thought, discussion, and brainstorming.
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