Winning is more than being the best
Monday, November 17th, 2008Delighted to see one of our former postgraduates, Tom Vaughan, clean up at the Periodicals Training Council’s New Journalist of the Year awards. He won best business feature journalist and the overall award, and was so confident of winning that he didn’t bother to attend.
“I thought getting shortlisted was about as well as I’d do,” he said when I called to congratulate him. “Although I had a short holiday booked, I’d certainly have turned up if I felt that I had a chance.”
He had a point. I’ve judged a lot of these awards, and business journalists generally get a raw deal.
Tom works for Caterer and Hotelkeeper, which at least covers issues that most of us can understand. But how many judges treat work from Cranes Today, Pipeline World or Refrigeration and Air Conditioning with the same objectivity?
Judging is normally heavily weighted by those who have only worked on consumer mags, and sponsors. They don’t understand the subject, so are far less likely to appreciate its virtues.
Being able to judge the qualities of a feature on paint polymers, derivatives or motherboards is not easy. But I feel that if you take on judging responsibilities, you’ve got to assess them all on equal terms.
I judged some Emap awards a few years ago, and one of my fellow judges, head hitter on a women’s consumer title that shall remain nameless, pushed a pile of fishing and motorbike titles to one side, saying: “Well, they can’t win because I don’t understand them.”
I pushed all the women’s magazines to one side in retaliation, saying: “Well, they can’t win because I don’t understand them.”
She said indignantly: “That’s not fair!”
So I retorted: “Nor’s what you did. Shall we start again?”
Interestingly, she still doesn’t speak to me.
That one of the great thing about journalists: they don’t hold a grudge.