I'd Like To Thank The Academy...

I have a love/hate relationship with awards. No matter how many times you tell yourself that you don’t do this job for the recognition, there is still something to be said about being acknowledged by your peers. This past Friday was a perfect example of all that is good and bad about award banquets.

Mary, Grace and I traveled south to Makanda on Friday for this year’s Southern Illinois Editorial Association awards. We knew going in that we had done fairly well, with The Journal-News earning seven awards according to the preliminary list, but you never know whether it will be a first place, an honorable mention, or something in-between.

As it turns out, we did get one first on the day, for best sports coverage in our division, which is for “weekly” papers with circulation over 2,800. This is the second time we have received this award since I’ve been at the paper, although we had to share it with one of the Collinsville publications last time.

I take a lot of pride in what I do and work very hard to put out the best possible product I can for my three or four pages that center on the athletic accomplishments of the area. So I was feeling pretty good about myself as we collected our bounty and headed back to Hillsboro.

This is where the other side of occupational accolades comes in. We knew that a letter from the Illinois Press Association announcing the winners of their annual editorial contest. The J-N had done pretty well in the advertising contest, which was announced a few weeks earlier, so we were eagerly anticipating seeing how we did on the editorial side. As Mary opened up the letter, it was hard for me to hide my disappointment. We were finalist in just one category and for the first time since I began at the paper, I was shut out by the IPA.

As I said, you tell yourself that you don’t do this for the recognition, but I still found myself questioning my worth. Was all of 2011 a waste? Why even bother trying in 2012? If my contemporaries think I suck, how long until the general public comes to that conclusion too? Of course all of these are ridiculous, but at the time, I didn’t want to hear about it. I just wanted to be mad.

Right then and there I told Mary that I wouldn’t be attending the banquet, even though I always enjoy it and was really looking forward to taking Grace for the first time, just a few hours before opening that cursed letter. I’d like to say that I’ve come to the realization that awards don’t matter and I came to my senses, but I’m still a little bitter.

But I’m working on it. Rather than lament the fact that we didn’t get much recognition, I’m going to work on getting better. I look back on some of my work when I first started writing for the paper and I see how much better I’ve gotten over the last five years, but I still want to get better. Everyday is a learning experience and I think when that stops, it’s probably time to do something different.

So I will try to take the attitude that as long as I’m doing my best, everything will be okay, no matter how hard that may be. I imagine if I can do that, the whole awards thing will figure itself out on its own.