With judging completed on Monday, The Newspaper Works has named finalists in its PANPA technical excellence categories.
Entries were among more than 1000 submitted for this year’s Newspaper of the Year competition.
Other categories cover top newspapers, digital publishing, marketing, advertising and executive excellence (see finalists in these categories here).
Awards will be presented across two nights, starting with the Advertising & Marketing Awards at The Establishment in Sydney on August 20, followed the next evening by the Newspaper of the Year gala night at The Ivy, hosted by media personality Julia Zemiro.
Entries in the technical excellence categories were judged by a panel chaired by Steve Packham (DIC Australia) and including former print centre manager Darryl Mullen and GXpress managing editor Peter Coleman. Finalists in the new Print Centre of the Year award – also judged this week – will be announced on July 22.
Technical excellence finalists announced by The Newspaper Works are:
Single-width (community)– The Courier (Narrabri), Northern Downs News, The Bairnsdale Advertiser, and Pilbara News.
Single-width (regional)– Gisborne Herald, Mackay Daily Mercury, Newcastle Herald, Port Macquarie News, Gisborne Herald (Angus Bulls), Geraldton Guardian, The Chronicle, and The Morning Bulletin.
Single-width (national/metropolitan)– Apple Daily (Taiwan), The Weekly Telegraph (Fairfax Media), Apple Daily Printing (Hong Kong), and The Australian Financial Review (Fairfax Media).
Double-width (community)– The Weekend Sun (APN News & Media: Sun Media), and New Zealand Chinese Herald (APN News & Media).
Double-width (regional)– Border Mail (Fairfax Media), Fraser Coast Chronicle (APN News & Media), The Land (Fairfax Media, North Richmond), and Sunshine Coast Daily (APN News & Media, Yandina).
Double-width (national/metropolitan)– South China Morning Post, The Canberra Times (Fairfax Media), The Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Media, North Richmond), West Australian (West Australian Newspapers), The Weekend Herald (APN News & Media), and The Australian Financial Review (Fairfax Media).
Pre-print or supplement– Northern Daily Leader (Tamworth Regional Council Special), Country Leader (Livestock Annual), The West Australian (Fresh), The Area News (On The Road), Gatton, Lockyer & Brisbane Valley Star (Gatton Drive), South China Morning Post (Jewellery), and Sun-Herald (Sunday Life).
Print Centre of the Year finalists to be announced on July 22.
Judging the technical awards: A day before flying down to Sydney to join fellow judges Steve Packham and Darryl Mullen, I picked up a copy of the local community-owned Cooroy Rag… and was stunned by the quality, both of the print and the repro (writes Peter Coleman).
Even allowing for the bright light of the Sunshine Coast day, it was to be a disquieting experience.
For as we worked through the stacks of entries at the Pyrmont offices of the Newspaper Works, what struck me most was the inconsistency of picture quality often among work from the same print centre, and which had in any case been selected as the best by entrants.
Chairman, Steve Packham had devised a system which allowed judges to penalise shortcomings in a variety of areas – from fold and presentation to the realities of fleshtones and colour density – and reward standout work. Despite our backgrounds, we were not to make allowances for what we knew to be the technical considerations driving say, an over-generous lap or pin-marks at the head of the front page – something press makers should think more about when addressing Asian markets – but to ask ourselves what (Packham’s) wife would think. To consider entries from a reader’s viewpoint.
Even so, it was harder than I had thought, not least when I found myself with notional tie between two jobs from the same publisher, despite the different factors driving the scoring of each.
So much of it came down to repro and presentation: One job from a single entrant had perfect presentation and finely-tuned halftones, another had flat, contrastless illustrations, and yet another, trimmed entry had no bleeds and the frame of a type-area ad caught by the trimmer blade.
Yet another, a preprint intended to be trimmed, had been submitted untrimmed and with the colour bars and trim marks still in place. Should I discount the error… knowing that a few weeks back I had collected just such a sample from my newsagent?
So with readers deserting print in droves, and with advertisers hard enough to find, why aren’t we trying harder? Why does the big publishers’ rush to get to press – and sometimes to automate (or outsource?) every possible element – leave some products of mass-market publishers looking inferior to a 7000-circulation local Rag?
Pictured: Packham, Coleman and Mullen scrutinise entries at Monday’s sessions