March 23 – Due to a large number of districts with a late spring break this year, the deadline has been extended to Tuesday, April 3, midnight.

March 1 – All entries for our second spring individual award competition, the Best of Colorado Awards, must be uploaded prior to April 1, 2012. This is an all-electronic contest, with no mailing required (though there is an option to mail DVDs or CDs for video broadcast entries only). Judging will be done by a variety of professional and scholastic journalists from across the nation, awards will be given by enrollment classifications (3A, 4A, 5A) and results will arrive at each school in the form of award certificates in early May.

We hope the timely arrival of these certificates will lead to celebrations of individual student achievement during end-of-year media awards ceremonies, Quill and Scroll ceremonies, or school awards presentations. After all, there has been some terrific work done this year among Colorado scholastic journalists.

School media may enter as many or as few of the contest categories as desired, but may only enter once per category. Only current CHSPA member media may enter this contest, and there are no additional fees for members to take advantage of this competition. If a school medium is not a current member, renewing or starting a membership is the first step in entering this competition, as only members will be sent the login and password for the CHSPA contest site (where all entries will be uploaded).

Step-by-step instructions can be found here:
1. General instructions and background on the contests for all media.
2. The list of contest categories for yearbook, categories for newspaper, and categories for video broadcast.
3. Specific instructions for yearbook entries and specific instructions for newspaper entries. Video entry instructions are sent directly to member video broadcast media advisers.
IMPORTANT: please export all entries as PDFs in SMALLEST FILE SIZE format, which will speed uploads and downloads — procedures are in the instructions for specific media.
4. Fill in the entry form (in Microsoft Word format) for newspaper/newsmagazine, for yearbook, or for video broadcast. Then be sure to upload that Word document when you upload your contest entries to the contest website (www.chspacontests.org)

All current members will receive an email (through the adviser) with login and password for accessing the contest site not later than March 10. That same email will include a Word document for advisers to fill in that will contain student names, etc. The actual uploading of contest submissions takes very little time, and we recommend that advisers only handle this. Preparing entries is more labor-intensive, requiring staffs to sort through material from the current school year, choose their best efforts, and create copies of those pages or spreads in a contest folder.

The drop dead deadline is that all submissions must be uploaded to the contest site by midnight, March 31, along with the Word document which functions as the medium’s official entry form. All award certificates are generated from these forms, so please double check for accuracy.

March is a busy month, with all sorts of deadlines, TCAP, spring break, etc., but we hope advisers and staffs will take a few precious minutes to gather entries and be part of this competition. Last May nearly 1,400 certificates were awarded to Colorado student journalists.