Spring Media Day

Spring Media Day is a conference that brings journalism students from across the state to gather and attend media workshops, seminars and lectures taught by professionals and professors. Our spring conference focuses primarily on news media (newspapers, online publications, broadcasts, etc.).

Spring Media Day 2027 is partnered with the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City!

The date for Spring Media Day ’27 will be released in fall of 2026.

Critical Service, Previously Published, and On-Deadline Contests

Critical service is a holistic review of your publication by a media professional. The previously published contest judges students’ work submitted in our monthly contests that was given a “Superior” or “Excellent.” The on-deadline contest judges students’ abilities to work under deadline on a specific theme.

Schools must be paying members of OSM in order to enter contests and critical service. For the 2025-26 membership form, please visit OSM Membership. If you have not registered as a member yet, we must have your membership form to enter your school’s publication into our contests. (Not sure if you’ve registered? Email us at osm-oipa@ou.edu and we can check for you!)

Instructions for how to enter can be found in each packet along with submission deadlines. Please let us know if you have any questions about entering.

To enter your school’s publication into our critical service and other contests, please download the contest packets:

2027 packets with instructions for all Spring Media Day categories will be posted below.

  • SMD27-Magazine-Packet
  • SMD27-Newspaper packet
  • SMD27- Online packet

The Previously Published contest (think of this as “best of” the monthly contest entries) form is due emailed to us at osm-oipa@ou.edu.  To enter the Previously Published contest, please download this excel document:

  • SMD27-Previously-Published-Entries-Form

To nominate exemplary students and advisers for individual achievement awards, please download the following form for Teacher of the Year and various students of the year applications. These forms are due on

  • Individual achievement award packet SMD27

The On-Deadline 2027 contest is not live.

  • On-deadline-prompts-SMD-2027

Don’t Forget About the Jack Dever Scholastic Short-Form Documentary Award

At Spring Media Day 2024, OSM introduced a new contest category, named after its first winner: the Jack Dever Scholastic Short-Form Documentary Award. Jack Dever, a student from Yukon High School won the award with his short documentary “The Faces of Radio,” which took a fun and compelling look behind the scenes of people in the often-overlooked Oklahoma radio industry. Dever’s work made the OSM team realize there should be a category for documentary. Moving forward, this will be a category offered yearly with a deadline in the spring that coincides with the On-Deadline contest deadline.
Guidelines and requirements for the Short-Form Documentary entries are as follows:
  • A documentary film is a nonfiction motion picture dealing creatively with a particular subject. It may include a variety of techniques such as interviews, filming of actual events, partial reenactment, stock footage, stills, animation, stop-motion or other techniques, but the emphasis must be on a factual story, not fiction.
    • A short-form documentary abides by the same guidelines, but for this contest will need to run 10 – 30 minutes.
  • Short-form documentary films tend to have the simple three-act structure of an introduction, middle, and resolution.
  • Judges will be looking at storytelling ability along with video and audio quality.
  • The entry must be a working hyperlink that takes the judges to a platform such as YouTube or Vimeo.
    • Make sure the work is not set to private.
  • Students may work independently, as partners, or in a group of three. No more than 3 students may work on one submission

Click the link below to submit:

Submit to the Jack Dever Scholastic Short-Form Documentary Award here

If you’re interested in how our critical service judges will rate your publications, the scorebooks for each category are below–note these are the 2024 scorebooks, but we do not expect changes to the ’26 scorebook:

Past Spring Media Day Awards

See the awards list from 2026 Spring Media Monday

SMD26 Awards

See the awards list from 2025 Spring Media Monday:

SMD25 Awards

See the awards list from 2024 Spring Media Monday:

SMD24 Awards

See the awards list from 2023 Spring Media Monday:

SMM23 Awards

See the awards list from 2022 Spring Media Monday:

SMM22 Awards

See the awards list from 2021 Spring Media Monday:

SMM21 Awards

See the awards list from 2020 Spring Media Monday:

SMM20 Awards

Every year, we recognize the work of students across the state in our awards ceremony. Please see our comprehensive list of past winners dating back to 2009 here.

 

Have a question about Spring Media Day that’s not answered here? Check out our FAQ page or email us at osm-oipa@ou.edu.