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Awards reflect SND's new global nature
PHILADELPHIA -- The Society of News Design is going ever-more global. Now boasting more than 2600 members in 51 countries, awards spotlighted the organization's international breadth.
"For our top three categories (Best of Show, Judges' Special Recognition and the Gold awards), about 80 percent of the winners were from outside the United States," said SND Executive Director David Gray. "That's been true for the past two years. Prior to that, it had been about 40 percent."
This year, non-U.S. papers won 45 percent of all awards, with 17 of the 21 Gold awards and four of the six Judges' Special Recognition awards leaving the country. Rodrigo Sanchez, art director at El Mundo Metropoli in Madrid, Spain, garnered the Best of Show award, the top honor in the SND contest.
Of the papers designated the world's best-designed, La Vanguardia from Spain joined the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in the over-175,000 circulation category.
In the 50,000-circulation to 149,000-circulation category, The European of London, Reforma of Mexico City, The Scotsman of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Le Soleil of Montreal were joined by two U.S. papers, the San Francisco Examiner and The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash.
In the under 50,000-circulation category, two Canadian papers -- Le Devoir of Montreal and the Kingston (Ont.) Whig-Standard -- joined the Ball State Daily News of Muncie, Ind., the Centre Daily Times of State College, Pa., and The Mirror of Seattle.
Gray attributes part of the surge to the state of the industry in the United States and overseas.
"This is just a natural course of events," Gray said. "If you talk to the people who redesign newspapers, all the action is overseas. Most of the market in the U.S. is kind of stagnant."
The organization is taking note of that trend. A new chapter in Europe was formed this year, and SND will hold its annual meeting in Copenhagen next year and in Argentina in 2002.
"An art director in Argentina called today seeking slides of the Argentinian contest winners for a class he is teaching," Gray said. "He didn't want the U.S. winners or anybody else. It came to about 90 slides for the past two contests."
-- S.E.B.
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Last modified: July 24, 2008