The 2022 Golden Press Card contest is ready for entries

It is time to enter your best work of the past year in the 2022 Golden Press Card journalism competition.

(The Golden Press Card Awards will be held May 18, 2023 at Maple Hall in downtown Knoxville from 6 to 8:30 p.m.)

The competition recognizes the best journalism produced in East Tennessee last year.

The awards this year feature some new categories and a new student competition so please review the categories carefully.

The contest, held by the East Tennessee Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, will be open for entries from Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023 until midnight Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023. (The chapter board has extended the deadline from Feb. 12 to midnight Feb. 19.)

Works created in 2022 are eligible for entry from journalists working in East Tennessee. See the complete rules.

All entries are made online through our special contest site with entries fees paid with a credit or debit card, or through PayPal.

New categories include:

– Arts and Culture Reporting. This category is in memory of Brandon Gibson, who died in November at age 36. Gibson, managing director of the Marble City Opera, was well-known in the Knoxville arts community as an actor, voice actor, writer, reviewer and essayist. He also won a Golden Press Card award for his writing in the BLANK Newspaper.

– Business and Technology Reporting for coverage of people, trends, issues or events related to technology, companies, financial markets or consumer reporting.

– Climate and Environment Reporting for insightful reporting on climate and environmental issues.

– Three photojournalism categories.

– Sports beat reporting

– Student journalism awards for Best News Coverage, Best Feature Story and Best Student Journalist.

See the complete list of categories. Some categories have separate winners for Television, Radio, Large Newspapers, Small Newspapers, and Digital Only while in others all media compete against each other.

If you need some inspiration on what to enter, see who won last year.

We encourage every organization to enter the Horace V. Wells Jr. Community Service Award, which honors a single story that had impact. This is one of the most important awards of the Golden Press Card competition. The legendary East Tennessee journalist was “a bulwark against injustice, tyranny and abuse of the less fortunate.”

If you entered last year, your contest login and password already exist for this year’s contest. (Most newsrooms have a contest coordinator who can do entries for the entire newsroom so check to see what your newsroom is doing.)

If you are entering for the first time or need a refresher, we have “help” and “how-to” information on the contest site. If you run into problems or have questions, reach out to gpcawards@gmail.com or call contest administrator Jack Lail at (865) 686-6033.

Judging will be done by members of the Hawaii SPJ professional chapter.

Resources: