CRITERIA FOR PROPOSING/ELIMINATING CONTESTS
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JACC mail-in and on-the-spot/bring-in contests are designed to honor outstanding work by student journalists, as well as to help develop well-rounded student publications.
Mail-in competitions are designed to evaluate work done in student publications and on-the-spot/bring-in competitions are designed to test student skills in head-to-head competitions under controlled circumstances.
When contests are added or subtracted, decisions should be based on a balance of industry trends and actual practice among member schools. Contests should not be added for contest sake. And existing contests should be reviewed periodically and regularly by the board of directors to insure they are appropriately designed and reflect JACC goals. Contests may be added as new trends emerge, but existing contests should be eliminated or consolidated when there is a significant drop-off in actual practice.
Mail-in contests must be adopted no later than the fall meeting of the Board of Directors to be applicable for the ensuing state convention. The motion to adopt a contest must include a title, description, class, composition of an entry criteria, judging criteria and award information. On-the-spot and bring-in contests may be adopted in concept no later than the fall meeting of the board of directors with full detail developed no later than the winter meeting of the board. Contests may be eliminated at any board meeting prior to an entry deadline. Submission of a valid form does not ensure that a contest will be adopted by the board, only that the board will consider the contest.
Existing contests may be split or combined when periodic and regular review shows that there is a clear division in actual practice, or no longer a significant split in practice. A contest should already reach at least two-thirds capacity among entries before a split is considered. Further, it should be reasonable to assume that a split in the contest will yield 25 percent capacity the first year after the split and 50 percent in subsequent years. Entries that do not meet the qualifications of the contest, in the minds of judges, should not be considered in determining capacity.
Capacity: If 50 schools regularly participate in contests and each school is allowed two entries in that category, capacity would be defined as 100 entries; capacity of magazine contests will be determined by the number of schools producing magazines. Capacity reports should be made as a part of the final convention report by the convention chair and maintained in multi-year format by the secretary. The online communications director will post the multi-year format on the organization's web page.
Existing rules already allow for the cancellation of a contest that receives fewer than six entries (except for general excellence competitions). But if a contest receives less than 25 percent capacity for three straight years it should be considered as no longer actual practice and be considered for elimination on a permanent basis.
New contests may be designed to encourage publications to adopt emerging trends. But to avoid a proliferation of experimental contests, there should be evidence that at least 20 percent of member schools regularly engage in an emerging trend before a contest is added. Proposals for new contests should include contest name, contest description, class, contest judging criteria and survey evidence that at least 20 percent of member schools regularly engage in developing content that would meet the criteria.
Because new contests may yield relatively few entries when first introduced, only unranked "meritorious" awards will be awarded for at least the first two complete cycles of the contest (i.e., state conference to state conference or regional conference to regional conference). As the end of the second cycle approaches, the Board of Directors should review growth of the contest to determine whether it has reached status warranting regular first-through-fourth-plus-honorable-mention status.
Any contest that generates fewer than 10 percent capacity for any conference should include only "meritorious" rather than ranked awards for that conference. "Meritorious" awards will rank as "third place" awards (3 points) for point totals counting toward the Pacesetter total.
