After so many years of young writer award programs - since 2013 in Melbourne - the 2021 awards are taking an ever so slightly different turn.
The awards changed significantly in 2020 when the ARPA (Australasian Religious Press Association) model was followed saving the panellists a great deal of effort.
Prior to 2020 the panellists marked every young writer article of the first six months of the year and as the young writer numbers grew, so did the demand upon the panellists.
The ARPA model was quite different. Each Christian press media member sent on their BEST article in a category and only this one article was marked.
That seemed a better way forward in light of the growing numbers of young writers and realising that each young writer had to make a decision, not only relating to their BEST article, but whether their selection was their BEST for in their determination, their BEST for what the panellists might be looking for.
A bit tricky.
2021
The ever so slight change is that the Kiwi young writers and the International young writers will be separate to Australia.
Although they are separate in function now with their “Stand Alone’ operations, in 2021 they will run their own archive web sites and be totally independent as unincorporated bodies.
The three groups of young writer ministries -
Kiwis
Internationals
Australians
Voluntarily they will – not come together – rather have their annual awards combined as has been the situation over the past decade.
In one sense there is no change at all, as the awards program will run as it has always run. In another sense it is different as there are three separate groups who come together as equal partners.
In practise
The pre-awards for the Kiwis and Internationals has one matter to be resolved. The information of BEST article selection and wherte to send the Best article selection may be done from Australia.
The other alternative is that the information is sent from Australia to the Kiwi coordinator and the Internationals coordinator – those coordinators in effect send on the information so as to not create any confusion.
Operations
The operations continue as they do now. The Kiwis and Internationals each have coordinators, editors, CT links, photo selectors, late article chasers, Facebook and Christian media link people and internal Newsy Bits coordinators and video people.
None of this changes. The one small change is that the editors will no longer have need to send their articles to PSI Australia – only the titles for the weekly publishing list that goes to Christian Today.
In this sense all three groups need to have a central listing so the editor of Christian Today knows which day are specific articles published. No different as it happens now. 2021 looks exciting.
Dr Mark Tronson - a 4 min video
Chairman – Well-Being Australia
Baptist Minister 45 years
- 1984 - Australian cricket team chaplain 17 years (Ret)
- 2001 - Life After Cricket (18 years Ret)
- 2009 - Olympic Ministry Medal – presented by Carl Lewis
- 2019 - The Gutenberg - (ARPA Christian Media premier award)
Gutenberg video - 2min 14sec
Married to Delma for 45 years with 4 children and 6 grand children
