Last year, a new fee structure was introduced for the Newspaper and Digital News Media Contest. The new structure kept the same price of the school entry fee, but limited the number of entries to five.  This year we are excited to increase the number of entries from five to ten, while maintaining a per-entry charge for all additional entries submitted by each school.

IJEA’s primary objective in making this change is to generate enough revenue from each year’s contest so that the contest entry platform pays for itself. This decision results from consecutive years of the Better BNC platform costing us considerably more than the contest brings in.

Beginning with our upcoming contest, the entry fees will be as follows:

• The school contest entry fee will stay at $20.
•  The entry fee includes TEN entries in any category, up from last year’s five.
• For additional entries beyond the first ten, the fee will be $5 per entry.

With these changes, a school would pay—at minimum—$20 for ten entries, or at the most, $265 to enter every available per-school contest slot.

The contest will continue to allow schools to submit two entries in most categories, a submission feature most other contests do not permit.

The IJEA board continues to listen to adviser feedback and does not make changes to contests lightly.

If you have any questions, please reach out to a board member. If you work for a school that is financially unable to continue to participate in the contest because of these changes, we want to hear from you as well, so that we can better gauge the impact of these changes.

Thank you! The March 15 entry deadline will be here before you know it, so start pulling together your publication’s best work. We’re looking forward to seeing it!