| Show THE BETTER NEWSPAPER CONTEST er Thomas Judd His partner at that time was Harrison Conover of Springville In 1950 Dean Culmsee continued the practice by selecting the Box Elder News-Journal co-published by William Long and Charles Claybaugh for the recognition Culmsee whose sense of humor didnbar jokes on himself often told his audience that he was known on campus as Professor Clumsy He thought but wasncertain that it was justmispronunciation of my name The sense of humor led him to establish another ongoing award which no publisher wanted to win He termed it the Blunder of the Year and in recognition of it presented something unusual heacquired in his extensive foreign travels The designation is found in todayBetter Newspaper Contest as the Screw-Up of the Year Utah journalists who had often discussed formal competition among their newspapers but had never acted on the idea finally made itreality in 1950 With the Brigham Young University experience the Harrison Merrill citation and Dr Culmseeawards to prompt them the Board of Directors headed by President Andy Rytting of Tremonton estab lished the Better Newspaper Contest It was designed to add to the front page and Community Service citations judging for various other areas of newspapering including typography news writing photography editorials columns and use of illustrative material The plan called for points accumulated in those categories to be totalled to determineGeneral Excellence Award recipient First through sixth places were scored on10-8-6-4-2-1 basis and the paper accumulating the highest total was the winner In order to give an equal opportunity to papers of all sizes two classes were created based on circula tion Many years later the Board changed this procedure instructing judges to simply rate entries for General Excellence discarding the scoring system which closely emulatedtrack and field meet At the Winter Convention of 1952 the first winners in what has become the ongoing present-day contest were an nounced Accompanied by appropriate fanfare the revelation 387 Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |
