INA to provide photos from State Wrestling Tournament
IHSAA 2021 State Wrestling Championships The Iowa High School Athletic Association and the Iowa Newspaper Association are again working together to facilitate the INA Photography Pool service for Iowa newspapers during the 2021 State Wrestling Championships. The IHSAA will be announcing changes and possible restrictions later this week for its annual state wrestling tournaments. The…
Read MoreNo justification for shutting the public out
This article is free to use and publish in your publication. Randy Evans, executive director Iowa Freedom of Information Council There are some high-minded legal principles written into Iowa laws and rulings by our state’s Supreme Court. But in recent weeks, one of those sound principles has run into a few closed-minded state officials and…
Read MoreThe governor has to follow the law, too
This article is free to use and publish in your publication. Randy Evans, executive director Iowa Freedom of Information Council When the Iowa Legislature wrote the state’s public records law 50 years ago, lawmakers wanted to guarantee that anyone could obtain copies of state and local government records that are not designated by statute to…
Read MoreDon’t let fatigue and friction keep you from covering the pandemic
Al CrossPresident, The Society of Professional Journalists Just as some people are tiring of taking precautions against the novel coronavirus, helping it spread, I’m sure some newsrooms are tiring of covering it. And that helps it spread, too, by making it seem less of a threat, and discouraging precautions. And I fear that some newsrooms…
Read MoreWhy we participate in contest – Zack Kucharski, Cedar Rapids Gazette
Few of us get into journalism to win awards. Many more of us seek to learn every day, introduce and highlight interesting people and the work done in our towns or better the places we live through connecting people economically. So why participate in the INF Better Newspaper Contest? The awards program helps us do…
Read MoreWhy we participate in contest – Amy Gilligan
As journalists we don’t often take time to savor our work. There’s always another story to write, another deadline to hit, another product to get out the door. Preparing entries for the INA contest each fall provides an opportunity to take a moment to look over the body of work we have done in a…
Read MoreConvention Corner: Resources available for your last-minute questions!
We’re getting down to the wire. The deadline to submit entries for the Better Newspaper Contests is Friday, October 16. All entries must be submitted and uploaded to the betternewspapercontest.com website by 4:30 p.m.; hard-copy examples must be postmarked on or before October 16. In past years, many entries were submitted in the 1-2 hours…
Read MoreWhy we participate in contest – Lisa Miller, New Century Press
What a year! Wait — it’s only September. To say the least, 2020 has been a challenge for newspapers. We crossed boundaries we didn’t even know existed. We discovered how to do business without a handshake. Has everything been a bed of roses? Absolutely not. Truthfully, we are still getting poked by thorns each day. …
Read MoreWhy we participate in contest – Tony Baranowski, Iowa Falls Times Citizen
We love contest time! Another deadline is tough to add in the early fall when literally everything about running a newspaper feels full bore. But it offers an opportunity to review our work, take pride in it, and consider all we can be doing better for the next time around. Something we just can’t do…
Read MoreContest Corner: How do I know what judges are looking for?
The Better Newspaper Contests are judged by members of other state press associations. Judging is a reciprocal arrangement; each year INA “trades” with another state press association. For the 2020 contests, judges will be members of the Virginia Press Association; in turn, INA members judged VPA’s contest entries. Because those judging INA members’ contest entries…
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