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by Douglas Dow
Looking back to 2002, when Technically Write won its first Award of Merit as an e-zine, we squeaked in with a total score of 72. This year, we leapfrogged to a 78, and for our effort, we received the additional accolade of "Most Improved."
For this, I have to thank once again Paul Conant, Jackie Damrau, Angie Gardi, and others, who saw to it that editorial quality reached new heights. This is the category in which scores noticeably soared.
That we didn't leapfrog to a 90, or an Award of Excellence, I have to blame myself. In order for the judges to find everything, the application form has to be filled out with exquisite precision. For newsletter editors, filling out this form for all to see and understand is a chore more daunting than roller-skating up Mt. Everest.
We fell down in, of all areas, the "Required Elements." The required elements are those things that all good newsletters must have. For e-zines, there are fourteen possible of these, and each volume of the e-zine must have twelve of the fourteen. Included are such things as the chapter name and newsletter title, society logotype, publication date, and so on.
Last year, we were perfect in this area. We used asterisks in the entry blanks to indicate required elements that appear in our chapter Web site, rather than in the newsletter itself. (By mandate of our chapter board, we avoid duplication of information.) And, it worked. We received credit for those elements: Society Contact Information, and Senior Officers' Names and Contact Information. This year, we overlooked using the asterisks, and we did not get credit.
We also did not get credit for the Mission Statement required element, although, like last year, it was front-and-center on our cover. All three judges missed it, even though all three found the STC logo and the other required elements that are on the cover.
Lastly, we did not get credit (as we did last year) for the recommended (optional) topic of Employment Information. Since the job bank is on the Web site, and our members know to go there directly, it is pointless to put stale job leads in the newsletter. Last year I pointed that out with an asterisk. This year I didn't.
I did note these exceptions in a commentary page that accompanies the entry form, but this year the judges were quite adamant: not in the newsletter, no credit. ("Sorry to be a hardass (as they say in Texas), but I ain't givin' it [the job bank] to you. It's on the Lone Star home page, not in the newsletter.")
Had the judging proceeded as it did last year, and if the judges had found the mission statement, Technically Write's score would have been a whopping 90. Finding the mission statement alone would have placed us at 82. Even so, with our 78, we were the "Most Improved." That means a lot!