The Society for News Design has had its share of troubles lately. A change in headquarters and some board/executive director issues on top of declining memberships and high fees led me to decide that the relatively high fees weren’t worth it. I am not a member for the first time in almost 25 years.
Now they are offering a webinar that explains why the judges in their annual competition selected what they did. Denise Reagan, AME at The Florida Times-Union and a person I respect, was an on-site witness to the judging and will share her thoughts on the process. That’s great, but I have a problem with the basic idea.
The judges — who largely change each year anyway — are terrific, but why design your pages for what the judges think? Shouldn’t you be designing for your readers, not some faceless judges that hand out a thousand or so awards? I won’t even go into the fact that SND basically ignores the vast majority of newspapers in this country: the small ones.
I think the idea is a good one, but charging for the webinar ($27.95 for non-members, $9.95 for members) is simply wrong. It’s not like there are any expenses involved and that information ought to be provided for free. The only people listening will be those people who design for the contest. That’s wrong, too.
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Owner, News Design School
Yeah… I actually just rejoined after years of being a lapsed member and having moved to the Digital side of my paper. I know money is tight, but charging for this type of webinar seems like it will just limit the audience and make it more insular. If anything you would want it to be free to have as much participation as possible. Why not get a J-Foundation, newspaper or University to sponsor the “event?”
Mike: What a great idea. SND even has its own foundation. It will be interesting to see how many people sign up.