Sunshine State Awards: What’s New?
This year SPJ Florida decided to keep most of its categories in its annual Sunshine State Awards competition the same. Last year we revamped many of the competition’s award categories.
Here’s a snippet of what we added, along with last year’s winners.
Journalist of the Year: honoring a journalist with the most outstanding body of work during 2012.
Winner: Miami New Times – Michael E. Miller, Death Trap
Diversity Award: honoring a journalist of color or sexual minority, which supports one of SPJ’s core missions of encouraging diversity in journalism.
Winner: Tampa Bay Times – Eric Deggans, Eric Deggans: A collection
Freedom of Information Award: honoring a journalist or news organization for outstanding use of public records in reporting or advocacy of rights such as press freedom and public access.
Winner: WESH-TV – Greg Fox, TextGate
Public Corruption Reporting: honoring a journalist or news organization for exposing government corruption.
Winner: Lakeland Ledger – Suzie Schottelkotte, Money in Mulberry
Anchor of the Year: honoring an anchor with the most outstanding body of work during 2012.
Winner: WFTS-TV – Jamison Uhler
Other additions included Best Single Issue for magazines; Infographic in our design division; Best Series in print, and three new beat reporting categories, Minority Issues, Consumer Reporting and Children’s Issues. Last year we also brought back by popular demand our Arts Criticism category, which had been eliminated. Lastly we’ve broken up our feature category into large and small. We also added a Spanish language division with seven categories in partnership with the South Florida Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. This year we did, however, eliminate our election categories.
In total there are more than 60 categories to choose from. Divisions include: Special categories, newspaper, photography and design, magazine, television, radio and online.
Submit your entries online today. Mark your calendars; early bird deadline is 5 p.m. Friday, February 21 with final deadline 5 p.m. February 28. The competition is open to all print, broadcast and online journalists in the state of Florida. Find out more about the awards. Read the awards categories here.
The competition recognizes quality journalism in the best tradition of our profession. Out-of-state journalists will judge all entries and may award first-, second- and third-place honors in each category.