How to judge Nevada’s newspaper and magazine contests

If you’ve volunteered to judge this year’s Nevada Press Association contest, here are detailed instructions. If you have questions, write to nevadapress@att.net or call us at 775-885-0866.

Assign a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner for each category* along with comments for each selection. You may also add comments about each overall competition, if desired.

(* Some categories have only a first-place winner. These include Story of the Year, Photo of the Year, Editorial of the Year, Outstanding Journalist, Journalist of Merit, Outstanding Visual Journalist and Silver Star Award.)

Please complete your judging by July 13.

Using the Better Newspaper Contest site

Logging in:

• Using Firefox or Chrome, go to betterbnc.com
• Click ‘Judges Login’ (circled in red at right).
• From the Contests drop-down list, select the 2018 Nevada Press Association contest.
• Enter your email address.
• In the password box, enter the password that was emailed to you. If you misplace or forget it, email us at nevadapress@att.net.
• Click Login. To change your password, go to ‘judging’ and then ‘my account.’
• During your first login, click the View Official Judging Instructions button to read the contest rules.

Assignments

To view your assigned competitions, either click Locate Your Judging Assignments at the end of the rules, or go back to your Judges home page and click Assignments.

To view the entries within a competition, click on the competition name, then click on an entry’s thumbnail image(s) to view each of them for review.

Once you have reviewed all parts to an entry (e.g. multiple attachments, websites, comments, etc.), you can give the entry a preliminary rating from 0-10 in the “How would you rate this entry?” bar near the top of the page, which will help you sort the entries when you are ready to choose winners. These rankings are visible only to you —not the entrants.

If you wish, you can add confidential entry comments (viewable only to yourself) in the Private Note box in the lower right side of the entry page.

When you have completed all review steps, click Done Reviewing This Entry at the bottom right of the page. This will help you keep track of which entries you have already reviewed for the competition you are currently evaluating.

Why am I judging this category?

It’s likely you will have more than one competition to judge. We try to tailor them to your expertise and interest, but it’s not always possible to match up everything.

You are qualified to make selections because 1) You’re a reader 2) You have a general understanding of the quality of work expected, and 3) You volunteered.

If you truly believe you’re unqualified to evaluate a category, let us know as soon as possible.

Nevada is rare among state contests in that we include magazines as one of our circulation classes. We find great journalism, eye-grabbing photos and outstanding designs among our magazine entries, and so will you. They help us expand our vision of quality for readers, much the same way our online entrants give us a different perspective on delivering stories.

Picking winners

When you have finished reviewing all entries and are ready to select winners, simply view the first entries in the Reviewed Entries box, as these are automatically sorted by their preliminary scores, from highest to lowest. In other words, you can easily narrow down your winning candidates based on the highest preliminary scores given.

Once you know which entries you want to award 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, simply drag and drop the thumbnail images for those entries into the corresponding Winners boxes at the bottom of the page.

Please add brief comments for each of the three winning entries in the Comments boxes directly below each winning entry’s thumbnail image. These are read by the contestants, and they provide valuable insight into why these awards help make better newspapers and magazines.

You may also comment on the overall competition in the Competition Comments field, to the right of the winning entry boxes.

Finalize Judgment

When you have completed the judging process for a competition (based on the contest’s rules and guidelines), click Finalize Judgment to save your decisions.
Repeat these steps for each of your assigned competitions.
When you have completed your assignments, please send a confirming email to nevadapress@att.net so we can begin compiling the results.

Mail-in categories

Some categories require the entries to be mailed to us. We then mail them to you, the judge. These include categories such as General Excellence and Best Overall Design, where the idea is to evaluate the publication as a whole. There’s no need to send those back to us, but you should keep them until all judging is done.

Thank you

Most of all, thank you. For decades, statewide press associations have been able to honor the best journalism and advertising through these annual contests. They aren’t possible without judges like you.