NPPA BOP Withholds Sports Awards for the Second Year

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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2003-04-08

NPPA BOP Withholds Sports Awards for the Second Year
By Maria Mann, BOP Chairperson

For the second consecutive year of this two-year-old Best of Photojournalism contest, judges did not honestly feel they could award prizes in either the Sports Story category or Sports Photographer of the Year. Three of those judges actively shoot sports (one exclusively). Another runs an agency that has a sports service under its umbrella.

It upsets me, it concerns me, but I also understand and agree with the judges' decision. Perhaps this is turning into a vicious circle -- we did not award last year, ergo no strong entries this year. No strong entry this year -- none for next.

What happened?

* There was clearly a misinterpretation of what is action or feature, what is individual or team, where to put sports portraits (not in sports but rather portrait-personality) -- a classic and historical error in many contests.

* In the sports story category there were no entries that made the grade. When incredible access to an athlete was given it was not taken advantage of fully.

* In the category of Photographer of the Year, there were many weak individual photos.

* Like entries in other categories I honestly believe that a contributing factor is bad or no editing. Stories might have been made stronger with other photos or with less photos.

* There were very few entries from the Winter Olympics and almost none from the World Cup soccer.

* Then there was the case of the administrative assistant at a major sports magazine who, when told that the entries were sent incorrectly (all the photographers' names were sent under one single ID code, with no differentiation between singles and stories), said to sports coordinator Carolyn Evans to take a hike (this is a rather mild translation of the actual quote). Rather unfortunate.

One of this year's judges, Robert Seale, of the Sporting News, said that he was one of those who were rather upset with NPPA last year for not naming a sports photographer of the year (Robert Hanashiro of Sports Shooter was one of our judges then). After judging this year's entries he said "now I know why" -- at the same time vowing to get the word out for the 2004 judging.

If there is one message I would like to deliver it is this: understand the judges' utmost need and desire to see the best work, well edited, well cared for, well presented. NPPA wants to make this work and supports sports photographers in every sense. Please help us achieve this goal -- do not give up.

I hope to soon put up a post-mortem and in the fall to put up in-depth guidelines for next year's contest. We may revisit how we judge to better recognize entries in the proper categories. Until then know that I share your disappointment in the sports category, but I sincerely believe we can be successful next year in this arena.

Special thanks to Maria Mann, BOP Chairperson, and Kenny Irby, Visual Journalism Group Leader, The Poynter Institute For Media Studies for granting us permission to reprint this story.

Related Links:

NPPA: BOP 2003 @ Poynter Online