All-Colorado — June 6 deadline

The All-Colorado Awards are designed to pro­vide a cri­tique of each year­book, news­pa­per or video media sub­mit­ted, along with hon­or­ing those media that meet a high stan­dard of excel­lence. The CHSPA board has approved the judg­ing rubrics (you can down­load your own copies) for news­pa­per, year­book and video media, so all our mem­bers will know exactly how they will be judged. The first All-Colorado Awards were be pre­sented at J-Day 2011, and replace the Sweep­stakes awards (which were derived by adding up indi­vid­ual award points). All our 2011 award-winners can be found by down­load­ing this spreadsheet.

You should receive the entry forms and instruc­tion by mail the week of May 16, but you can also find the entry forms and instruc­tions here.

The post­mark dead­line is Mon­day, June 6, 2011.

For­merly, only three media in each clas­si­fi­ca­tion were hon­ored with Sweep­stakes awards. In the All-Colorado model, any medium that meets the high­est stan­dards con­sis­tently will be hon­ored. We are pleased to be mod­el­ing our sys­tem on the one used by the Kansas Scholas­tic Press Asso­ci­a­tion. Last year, Kansas named 19 All-Kansas win­ners, from 60 news­pa­pers and year­books sub­mit­ted, by way of example.

Enter­ing this assess­ment is easy: Year­books send their lat­est vol­ume; news­pa­per send three com­plete issues, one from first semes­ter and two from sec­ond semes­ter; and video media send three pro­grams, illus­trat­ing the range of pro­gram­ming provided.

We have not done away with indi­vid­ual con­tests. In fact, please check the “Best of Col­orado” page on this site for the con­test rules, approved in Jan­u­ary, 2011.