2018 CJA Awards Announcement

Once again, the month of May means the Chess Journalists of America (CJA) have announced their annual award categories. It also means that I'll have material for at least three posts on this blog. Last year we had...

• 2017-05-04: 2017 CJA Awards Announcement
• 2017-07-25: 2017 CJA Award Entries
• 2017-08-08: 2017 CJA Awards

...and this year I expect we'll have similar. The following table shows a side-by-side comparison of the award categories for last year and for this year.

2017	2018

Too small to read? The CJA's completely revamped web site, Chess Journalism (chessjournalism.org), points to an online entry form that includes the same list of categories.

What's changed? The first four category groups for 2018 ('THE TOP FOUR', etc.) are carbon copies of the 2017 groups. When we reach 'NEWS AND FEATURES', things start to change. The category 'Best Tournament Report', which was present in 2016 but missing in 2017 (apparently an oversight), is back in 2018, and split into two: 'National / International' and 'Local / Regional'. The other categories in the group are unchanged except for a new category, 'Special Achievement'.

After 'ELECTRONIC MEDIA', where the categories haven't changed and which still includes 'Best Chess Blog', there is a new group, 'MULTIMEDIA CATEGORY'. Here the new categories are:-

• Best Mainstream Media (one free entry to anyone)
• Best Tournament Report
• Best Educational Lesson
• Best Interview

Whether you're a CJA member or not (I'm not), the CJA's revamped web site is worth a visit. It appears to have changed end-2017, but if you're nostalgic for the old site, it is still available at archive.org / chessjournalism.org.

The revamped site has 'News', mainly minutes from past CJA annual meetings, an 'Awards Archive' with links to relevant material, and back issues of The Chess Journalist, which hasn't been published since 2014. The minutes for the 2017 annual meeting explained,

PDFs of old issues of The Chess Journalists have begun to be put up online. There is also a list of issues that are missing from the White Collection in Cleveland that has been placed on line.

The earliest issue currently available is 'Chess Journalist - Spring 1977 v5 n1'. Since I've never seen an issue of the periodical dated before 2007, there is plenty here to keep me busy until the 2018 CJA Awards are announced three months from now.