Judging for the ACP Individual Awards was quite a process. A pool of more than 2,500 entries spanned across the 29 individual award categories. Roughly ten percent — 253 entries — from the original list were selected as individual award finalists.
The entire scoring process took place over two months and was completed by a judging staff of 20 skilled journalism professionals. ACP would like to extend a special thank you to Kansas City’s Springboard Creative, Chicago Headline Club, and Universal UClick for providing teams to help out with judging several of the individual award categories.
Many of the judges were thankful to be a part of the process, writing similar comments in each category’s feedback that it was pleasure to see all of the wonderful and creative student work.
As one Story of the Year judge noted, “It was invigorating to find students tackling incredibly tough and divisive issues with clean, crisp writing; well-formed and well-organized arguments; and clear calls to action. Their work, by and large, shows solid thinking and reasoned advocacy.”
Judges included comments on the strengths of each ranked piece, and constructive criticism for how to improve it. These more detailed notes for entries will be released after official rankings are disclosed.
Overall, the judge consensus on the entry pool for Individual awards was that it was full of hard work and impressive pieces. As one judge recognized in her feedback, every entry showed promise and commitment to good journalism. We at ACP would like to commend all publications for this and thank those schools that submitted for helping us recognize amazing student work.
Congratulations to all of the 2016 Individual Award finalists. Official winner rankings will be announced at the ACP National College Media Convention in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 20-23.