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By David Lyman
"Whoa," says Carlos Perez-DIAZ, peering into the massive ballroom in front of him."A lot of work."
Row after row after row of tables — 17 rows, more than 110 tables, all covered with newspapers — sit in front of him. Over the next three days, these tables will be cleared and re-filled dozens of times as Perez-Diaz, assistant editor at AS in Madrid, and 20 other judges sift through the more than 12,000 entries in SND's 23rd Best of Newspaper Design? competition. (Today more than 200 tables are needed for the competition using an entire country club — five large rooms.)
Other judges drift in behind him and fall silent. On the bus from the hotel, they were all chirpy, even a little cocky, juiced from the high-voltage Starbucks they found in the shop across the street.
But now, they are quiet, slightly cowed by the roomful of papers. And this is only part of it. There are two other rooms in the building filled with tables. They are not as big as the ballroom. But no matter how you cut it, the work ahead is formidable.
Intellectually, every judge who agrees to participate knows what he or she is getting into. They know there will be scads of entries. (There were 12,727 this year.) They know the hours are long and the intellectual demands grueling.
But when you have not been here before, there's nothing like that first sight of it. It is sobering. And a little intimidating.
The judging teams meet
Last night — Friday — they were a gaggle of strangers, a group of respected designers who had just flown in from around the world. Over a lavish dinner in Syracuse University's Faculty Center, they were fawned over and told about the task ahead of them.
"We are eager to hear your wisdom and learn from your experience," says Rosanna Grassi, associate dean for student affairs in SU's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
At the end of the evening, competition coordinator Kenny Monteith divided judges up into four teams so they could participate in a short practice round of judging.
Each team had just four entries to consider, making for a collegial and deliciously slow-paced round.
"Does anyone see anything they would vote for?" asked Andrew Phillips, captain of the team that would be looking at graphics entries. No one was interested in any of the work on the table. It was an awkward moment for a first-time captain.
"It's good to set a high standard," said a slightly nonplussed Phillips. Then, the team launched into a lengthy philosophical discussion about what they were looking for and how they approached their work. They were giddy with their own words.
It was Friday night and everything was grand. The 21 judges were feted. They sipped some wine, shared some fabulous food and were complimented every time they turned around.
What they didn't know was that they were just being fattened for the kill.
W-a-y behind the scenes
The competition does not begin with the judges, of course. And, though they select the winners, it doesn't end with them, either.
Administering the competition involves much more than looking at a few pages and doing one of those thumbs-up/thumbs-down routines. For 13 years (in 2001), C. Marshall Matlock, an associate professor at Syracuse University, has overseen the minutiae that makes this competition work. For weeks, hundreds of packages have poured into the audit room set up just for the competition. Pages of every imaginable stripe, sections, entire papers, even multiple-page entries with more pages than most major metro papers.
Matlock and a small army of volunteers — SU journalism students mostly, lead by Shamus Walker — have spent countless hundreds of hours cataloging, double-checking and cross-referencing the entries so that by the time the judges arrive in early February, all they have to do is look and vote.
"Planning the whole competition used to take a couple of months,' says Matlock. "Now, it takes almost that long just to prepare the entries. It's become a year-round process. By the time we sign off on the proofs for the book in late May or June, we are well into the planning for the next competition."
A tricky balance
Each of the four judging teams has a very different character. (A fifth team — the ones who pick the World's Best-Designed Newspapers™ — met the previous weekend.)
This is one of the most complex tasks facing the competition coordinator as he cobbles together the various teams. How well will these particular individuals mesh? Will they spend all their time battling one another? Will they be silent or insist on dominating the group?
The news team turns out to be a tough-but-friendly group. They are matter-of-fact in all their deliberations, but if you were headed out to a party, this is the team you would want to come along.
The graphics team is the most studious of the bunch. They are cordial enough, but make no mistake, they are all business — in a dot-com sort of way. When the skies dumped a couple inches of snow on the golf course outside, this was the team that took a short break, heisted a banquet-sized serving tray and went sledding.
The small newspapers team is the most easy-going of the bunch. Nothing rattles them. Perhaps it is because of the judging space they have been assigned to, a second-floor banquet room with plenty of windows and a deck to escape to. If you were going to spend a weekend at someone's house, you'd want it to be theirs.
The features team is the edgiest of the four. They are an oddly matched quintet, covering a span from middle-aged reserve to giddy childishness. This is the team where you are as likely to see $800 Prada shoes as a $400 iPod cranking out John Cougar Mellencamp.
There is an artful sensibility to them. And for all their adventurousness, they will later prove to be the competition's stingiest judges.
And they are off...
It is 9 a.m. Saturday. For the past 30 minutes, the judges have been picking at what will be an ever-present tableful of snacks; fruit, Danish, chocolate, cereals.
Finally, the judges are ready.
Harris Siegel, captain of the features team and a former edition coordinator, runs through the voting process one more time.
It is an oddball procedure. And, as its defenders will tell you, it works. But many entrants would be aghast if they saw it in action.
In theory, as soon as the pages are laid out on the tables, judges take a few minutes to peruse the entries so they have a general idea of what is out there. It is also a time for them to identify conflicts of interest. (When there's a conflict, SND president Svenake Bostrom — the 21st judge, or the "floating judge" — will step in to vote.)
Only then do they begin the actual voting.
In front of each entry, there are two 12-oz plastic drinking cups turned upside down. Slots have been cut in the bottom of the cups so judges can drop color-coded chips in the slot. Drop it in the red cup and you have voted no. In the blue cup, it is yes.
Three votes will get you an Award of Excellence. Four votes, consideration for a Silver Medal. Five votes, consideration for a Gold. But there are no guarantees. At the end of the round, judges make final judgments on medals. In the end, many of those four- and five-vote entries will get bumped back to an Award of Excellence.
Getting into the rhythm
In the news category, four of the five judges have moved swiftly through the first round. But Stephen Komives, planning and design editor for sports and features at the Savannah Morning News, is still out on the floor, looking carefully at each and every entry. What he is doing is marvelous. But it has no bearing in reality. If you do the math, judges cannot afford to spend much more than 20 or 30 seconds on each single-page entry.
By Monday evening, this team of judges will have passed judgment on more than 3,000 entries, some of them nearly 60 pages long.
"This first round is always rough," says news team captain Steve Cavendish, a designer at The Washington Post [now heading up design at the St. Petersburg n(Fla.) Times] and a veteran of several competitions as an assistant and once as the edition coordinator. "They feel guilty. Someone spent time designing these pages, but you cannot read every story on every page. You cannot even read every story on one page. It is a physical impossibility. After a couple of rounds they find their pace."
And by lunchtime, all the teams have done just that. Other than the graphics team, where the load is lighter and the nature of the work demands a slower pace, the teams are moving at a startlingly rapid rate.
No quotas, but selectivity reigns
If your page has any hope of winning an award, its impact has to be profound and immediate. Again, if you are lucky, someone will spend 20 seconds looking at your entry. Most of the time, it's a good deal less.
"We are some hard judges," says features judge Kate Elazegui, associate art director at 'O' magazine. She's joking. But by 9 p.m. Saturday, it is apparent that this group is tough. So tough, in fact, that team captain Harris Siegel, the AME of visuals for the Asbury Park Press and a former edition coordinator, explains to them --"just for informational purposes," he says later — that they are giving a lower percentage of awards than most panels.
"There's no quota on awards," Siegel says a little nervously. He's wandering into touchy territory. Time after time, it is said that this is a judges' competition. There are basic rules to be observed, but when it comes to what to give awards to, it is their decision completely. But there are realistic considerations. Give too few prizes and people will think it is impossible to win and balk at entering again. That is bad. On the other hand, give too many and the all-important cachet of winning a prize will start to diminish. That is bad, too.
Truth is, this group is being stingy. The hope is, that with this little lecture, they'll feel some guilt and give a few more awards.
So, as if he were delivering a line out of "The Three Bears" Siegel cautions his group against too many or too few awards. He wants their generosity to be just right.
And at the moment, their generosity is a little out of kilter with what administrators have come to expect. With the features judges, it is not uncommon to go through 50 entries and see only five or six "yes" votes. Not five or six winners, mind you; just five or six individual positive votes out of the 250 that are possible.
At the beginning of the voting on features pages, the panel boots 66 entries before giving a single Award of Excellence.
After Siegel's speech, they move on to the home/real estate category. The hope is that they will soften their voting a little, lower the bar a tad.
Not this bunch. This time the percentage of award-winners is even lower than in the last round.
Striking a pace proves critical
All day long, it is walk and vote, walk and vote. Up and down the aisles dozens of times as assistants scurry around, stacking the losing entries, marking the winning ones and taking them to the end of the ballroom where another set of volunteers key the information into a database and set them aside so they can be photographed for the book.
By the end of the day, Cavendish's words about finding a pace are taking on a new resonance.
This is an emotionally intense process. Concentrating on so much for so long is tough. By late Saturday afternoon, one of the youngest judges on the news team — someone who has never been an assistant — is completely dazed. So much so that some folks who have been through this before are concerned for her.
Those who have been here before have an idea of what they are getting into. They know how to pace themselves, how to relax more during the day, how to look and then move on to the next candidate rather than expend too much energy on any one.
Day Two begins, fueled by caffeine
At 8:30 Sunday morning, they are back at it. They were all here until well after 10 p.m. Saturday and the judges are noticeably worse for the wear. Most of them hung out in the hotel bar until after midnight. And this morning, it shows in their eyes.
But, buoyed by more Starbucks and more Danish, they leap into the fray again.
The news and features teams share the 7,488 sq. ft. ballroom here at Drumlins Country Club, a Syracuse University facility. It is a slightly tatty place; busy, but a little down on its luck. The carpets are worn, the walls need painting, the accessories a decade out of fashion. But there's something comfy about the place. (Update: new carpeting was added and walls were painted since this report but the reporter is accurate in his observations — now it is more "comfy.") And the food has been surprisingly good, so no one's complaining.
Discussions, discussions, discussions...
At issue right now is a year-end piece from the National Post. It's a cartoonish review of the year set up like an alphabetic primer.
"A is for Afghanistan, a terrorist haven," it begins. "B is for Bin Laden in a cave and unshaven."
And so it goes, including gems like "R is for recession, we're in one, I sense," "M is for McVeigh, dead by injection" and "H is for Harrison whose guitar gently wept."
It is a clever page. And extremely well-executed. There is some concern, though, that it deals with the Sept.11 attacks too lightly. And a couple of the judges do not get some of the references. Finally, someone reminds them that it is a Canadian paper.
" The concept is really smart," says Steve Antley, design editor at The Ledger, in Lakeland, Fla. and the page's most impassioned supporter. "It is so imaginative. I mean, the approach is so different."He points out the wittiness of the illustrations and some of the most clever rhymes. And then he reminds his colleagues of the definition of an award of excellence, that it needs to be "truly excellent" and can be awarded for work that is "daring and innovative.""We can't let this one go," Antley implores.
They examine the page more intently. A few laugh at some of the more audacious lines on the page.
"Well, it seems to me that one of us has to move a chip over," says John Sale, photo editor at The Spokesman-Review. And with that, he lifts his chip out of the ¡§no¡¨ pile and places it with the two "yes" chips.
An emotional end to Day Three
By Monday evening, everyone is whipped. But two of the most important orders of business are not done yet. First is to decide if there will be a Best of Show award.
There is just one nominee, a set of infographics from The New York Times done in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
One by one, the members of the graphics judges get up and make their well-orchestrated pitches.
Kris Goodfellow begins.
"You all know that September was unbelievable. No generation has lived through anything like this. New Yorkers were asked to cope with an incredible situation of chaos."
She begins to tear up as she talks of heroic graphics people. It is a remarkable package, in its reporting, design and execution. But there's a bit of eye-rolling in the group at Goodfellow's overstatement. When the team is done with its presentation, everyone looks at the entry. And then it's time for discussion.
No one wants to talk. Somehow, the combination of Goodfellow's emotion and the hallowed territory of Sept. 11 has turned this group silent.
Finally, it is Steve Dorsey who breaks the impasse.
"This is the best visual reporting I've ever seen," he says. You can hear it in his voice, though — there's a "but" coming. "But I think we should not talk about awarding it simply for being heroic. There was a lot of heroism during those days. This is superb work and that should be enough."
There. It is said. The room feels more at ease now.
Bob Rose, AME for editing and presentation at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch leaps in. " The work should stand on its own. We like it. And I want to vote for it. But I'm concerned about¡K concerned what it says about why we voted for it. The attack was horrible. But it was not unprecedented." There's a bit of bantering back and forth about the "heroic" aspect of the piece. But in the end, the discussion returns to the work itself. And now, it's a lovefest.
"It's rich with information," says one person.
"Incredible," says another.
"It pushes visual journalism to a completely new level," says a third. Finally, it's time to vote.
If it were not such a serious moment, it would be laughable. The vote is like one of those over-wrought "Survivor" finales. A Maxwell House coffee can is placed at the far end of the room. And one by one, the judges walk down, scratch their yes or no votes on a piece of paper and walk back.
All that is missing are the drums rolls and the ring of "Survivor" torches.
Five minutes later, Monteith stands in front of the group.
"The Times nomination had been given a Judges' Special Recognition," he says. "I'm sorry to report that it is going to lose that." He pauses. "Because it has been named the Best of Show."
There is applause and even a bit of cheering. But everyone is so exhausted that it is almost anti-climactic.
Within minutes, they have moved to the club's dining room, hoisting champagne and congratulating one another. Monteith has two more announcements.
He reveals the list of World's Best-Designed Newspapers™ determined earlier in the previous week. More applause.
"You are an incredible, incredible judging group," says Monteith. He hoists his cup and adds, "To three long days."
This has the dynamics of a summer camp. You know the routine, people spend a short, but intense time together, forming inordinately strong friendships. Now, they do not want it to end.
And for some, it hasn't. While they celebrate a few assistants head back to the ballroom to make sure everything is cleaned up properly. Erickson, the assistant from Indiana, is tired, but he's still pumped. Some of that is because he's just 26. But it's also because of what he's just seen.
Matt Erickson, an assistant from Indiana (see his story on this site), says it best:
"I had been waiting for this for six years," says Erickson. "I wanted to be here and see this. This is "The Book,"the bible. And it did not let me down. I learned more here this weekend than I would in a year of work."
David Lyman, a reporter at the Detroit (Mich.) Free Press, has more than 18 years of covering a variety of eccentric topics with distinction and style. Reprinted in part from Design # 83, Summer 2002. Design is the official magazine of the SND.
