2017 CJA Awards

If it seems like only two weeks ago that I posted about the 2017 CJA Award Entries, that's because it was indeed exactly two weeks ago. The Chess Journalists of America announced their annual awards last week and the full list can be found at Prize List for 2017 CJA Awards (chessjournalism.org), along with many links to the winning material. Just as in last year's post, 2016 CJA Awards (August 2016), I'll concentrate on the four categories that interest me the most.

• Best Book
• Chess Journalist of the Year
• Best Chess Art
• Best Chess Blog

The 'Best Book' categories had three winners: two in the 'Instructional' category, by Mark Dvoretsky and Cyrus Lakdawala, and one in the 'Other' category (that's a CJA code word for chess history), published by McFarland. The 'Other' category also included an Honorable Mention, also published by McFarland. Three and a half awards for one category? Good thing I no longer maintain my page on Award Winning Chess Books.

The winner of 'Chess Journalist of the Year' was Vanessa West, with Honorable Mention to Pete Tamburro. Of the four nominees, my money was on Peter Doggers of Chess.com, who by any objective standard is head-and-shoulders above the others. I am certain that his time will come. Statements by all four nominees can be found on Nominations received for Chess Journalist of the Year (chessjournalism.org).

For 'Best Chess Art', I used four of the five nominations to illustrate the '2017 Entries' post. The winner was the entry showing the big '70', for 'Chess Life Turns 70!, Chess Life, Cover, September 2016, by Scott Raymond'. In the related photo categories, 'Best Chess Photojournalism' and 'Best Single Photo', David Llada was the winner of both.

Since there were no nominations for 'Best Chess Blog' for the second consecutive year, I should follow last year's '2016 Awards' and mention the winner of 'Best General Chess Website'. Unfortunately, there were no nominations for that category either, so I'll just stop here.

A detail I hadn't noticed until writing this post is that nominations (and winners) for the ten 'News and Features' categories were doubled: one for 'Print' and one for 'Online'. Just like chess itself, chess journalism is a growth industry. Heartfelt congratulations to all the winners!