We’re so excited to accept your nominations for the 2021 John P. Murray Award for Excellence in Audience Development! Recipients will not only take home a $1,000 cash prize (and bragging rights!), they’ll also receive recognition via press release, have the opportunity to co-host a best practices webinar with us, and will score a real award to display in their newsroom!
So, what’s this award all about? See our breakdown of what we’re looking for and how to apply!
What is the John P. Murray Award for Excellence in Audience Development?
Established in 2019 in memory of the Alliance’s long-time colleague, the award recognizes three Alliance member news organizations each year that have demonstrated exceptional innovation and sophistication in understanding content strategy as part of audience development.
What info do we submit?
Nominations can center around any audience development efforts you undertook in the last year. Share how you embraced the Table Stakes capacities of modern news publishing to achieve your goals. And don’t forget to share notable measurable outcomes! For example, the number of new members, subscribers, email registrations; percent increase in engagement; percent increase in subscriber retention; event attendance; number of new social media followers, etc. that resulted from your efforts. Links to examples of successful content and visuals are also great! Here are some questions to consider as you think about your efforts from the past year.
Who is eligible?
Alliance newspaper members can nominate their own organization or other Alliance member news organizations for consideration for the award. Each nomination should be for an individual newspaper title – newspaper publishing groups should specify which newspaper they are nominating. The three recipients, one in each newspaper size category (small = 50 or fewer employees, medium = 51-250 employees, and large = more than 250 employees), will be announced in the Spring of 2022.
What’s new this year?
We have doubled the prize money! Each recipient will receive a $1,000 cash prize. In addition, each *qualifying nomination that is submitted before the January 28 deadline will be entered to win a $50 Starbucks gift card!
*Please note that you must be an Alliance newspaper member to be eligible.
When is the deadline?
Nominations will be accepted through Friday, January 28, 2022.
Can I submit the same nomination again this year?
Yes! We receive many great nominations each year and unfortunately, it is not possible to select them all. If you submitted a nomination last year and weren’t selected, we encourage you to submit again. Just update the submission with what has happened in the last year to move the program forward, and include metrics.
Who were last year’s recipients?
The Arizona Daily Star’s #ThisIsTucson (Small category), The Keene Sentinel (Keene, NH) (Medium category), and McClatchy (Large category) were the recipients of the 2020 John P. Murray Award for Excellence in Audience Development. Read the details in our 2020 press release and get inspiration from their presentations on the John Murray Best Practices webinar (member login required)!
Can I see the full rules?
Sure! Read more on our website.
Ok, this all sounds great! Where do we submit our nomination?
Complete this form! And make sure to hit “Submit” when you’re done!
Georgi-Ann is the Social Media & Content Manager for the News Media Alliance. Before joining the Alliance, she managed website, digital and social content at an early childhood education nonprofit in Washington, DC for eight years.
