This category recognizes individual journalists or journalist teams who exhibit exceptional skills in crafting engaging feature stories. The award recognizes creativity, originality, and a commitment to covering under-reported narratives. Entrants may only submit a single story. Text material can be submitted as a URL, with the link leading to the story, or formatted as a PDF. Note: maximum story length is 2,000 words.
Requirements for Submission
In order to be eligible for a Webster Award you must meet all of the following REVISED general requirements and the specific eligibility requirements for each award.
- Story Choice
- Is it a story worth telling in order to enhance knowledge and understanding or to entertain?
- Craft
- Is the story well-researched, well-written, well-told and compelling? Did it require resourcefulness, persistence and/or creativity to tell it? Is there more than a single voice telling the story, each from their point-of-view? Is the story compelling enough that you want to read to the end?
- Relevance
- Is the story relevant, creative or unusual? Will it resonate with readers?
- Context
- Did the story enhance the understanding of our history? Did it deepen our understanding of a particular issue? Did it explain a complex problem? Did it bring attention and understanding to a particularly interesting or worthy person, event or issue?
- You must be a BC-based journalist, or if it is a team submission the majority of those on the team must be BC-based journalists,
- For a team submission, list each person’s name and the name of the city/town where they reside,
- Submissions must report on stories of interest for BC audiences,
- Only submissions published/aired between June 1 of the previous calendar year and May 31 of the current calendar year are eligible,
- Submissions must have been published in journalism sources, including but not limited to, online, print, video, broadcast, podcast, radio, blogs, newscast, etc.
- Submissions are encouraged from the gamut of media departments/sections, including news, sports, the arts, business, etc.
- Published journalism as a result of the journalist(s) winning the Lieutenant Governor’s B.C. Journalism Fellowship is not eligible to be entered for a Webster Award.
- You must complete an online form for each submission,
- You can enter a story or series in only one category, however you can submit as many different entries as you like,
- A fee of $25 per submission. Major credit cards will be accepted for payment,
- Your submission must include a 200-word synopsis about the submission, explaining the story’s background, significance, impact and any other information you consider pertinent,
- New! You must include text that explains how your submission meets or exceeds each judging guidelines for your category,
- Aside from the synopsis, you must upload your major story to be reviewed, and should you be a finalist or the winner, this will be the story available for the public to access,
- You may then include up to a MAXIMUM of 2 other uploads, to support your entry,
- For any submissions that appeared in hard copy/print, please upload a PDF showing the actual page(s) published and make sure it can be read,
- Only one story should be in any PDF uploaded,
- For online text-based submissions, or regarding submissions in the Multimedia category, please upload a readable screen grab as your story was displayed, or a PDF’d version of this, or if need be, provide a link to the story that is not behind a paywall.
