SABEW adds magazine and online categories to contest

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers has added magazine and online categories to its annual Best in Business awards competition.

Here is a sneak peak at some of the the specific categories:

Magazine cover story

Honors outstanding reporting, writing and analysis in a package featured on the magazine’s cover. Entries can include up to seven stories or related elements from a single issue. Judges will consider the explanatory or investigative quality of the reporting and writing as well as originality in narrative presentation.

Magazine general excellence

The general excellence contest is limited to business, economics or personal finance magazines. Publications will submit three issues, one of which will be a mandatory issue. Here’s how the mandatory date will work: Weekly or bi-weekly publications should submit the issue that falls closest to the mandatory date. The issue date should not fall past the mandatory date. Monthly, bimonthly and quarterly publications should submit the issue that encompasses work from that month.

Business news site general excellence

Honors outstanding business news web sites. Both stand-alone business news sites and business web pages affiliated with general news organizations are eligible to enter. Sites will be judges based on how well they make use of online elements. Judges will give extra weight to sites that take best advantage of the online medium in their presentation of elements such as breaking news, special projects, slide shows, audio/video reports, blogs and interactive features such as forums and polls. They also will give special consideration to elements that are exclusive to the Web and stories that are broken on the Web. Judges will give less weight to sites that simply post online versions of a print product. At least one person on the staff of the business news site or affiliated news organization must be a SABEW member in order to enter this category. Include the site’s main URL and up to three additional URLs within the site. Entry also may include a letter of up to one page explaining why your site should be considered.

Blog

Honors outstanding business-related blogs produced by SABEW members. Can be produced as part of a business news site or produced and posted independently. Judges will consider four days’ worth of postings: two of the writers’ choice (all entries posted on each of those days will be judged), as well as all entries posted on the following dates : Thursday, April 19 and Monday, Aug. 6. If there were no postings on a mandatory date, enter all postings from the next day AFTER the mandatory date in which the blogger posted. Entry may include reader comments posted on each of the four days judged. Entrants should submit a URL for each of the four days, or create a single URL that holds postings from all four of the contest days.

Audio/video report

Honors outstanding audio/video reporting. Entries must focus on business news, must be produced for the Web and must air there before they appear on any other medium. Entrants should submit a URL for the audio/video report.

See all of the new categories here.