Our monthly contests give students the opportunity to submit work from their school’s publications for feedback from media professionals. This is an excellent way for students to receive constructive feedback on their work and for them to be rewarded for their efforts.
Each submission will be judged and assigned a ranking (Superior, Excellent, Distinguished Merit and Merit). Students who receive ratings of Superior or Excellent in magazine, newspaper, online or video categories will be eligible to compete in the Individual Excellence and Individual Achievement contests at Spring Media Monday.
Please note that monthly contests are only open to member publications. To see more details about registering your school’s publication, please see our Membership page.
The cost per entry is $4. This fee goes to pay contest judges and support the cost of the online contest management system. After you submit your entries online each month, you will receive a confirmation email from OSM with the number of entries you entered and the total price you will be charged. Then we will send you an invoice a few days after you complete the online entries.
For the 2024-25 academic year contests: Please download the following Word file for due dates and more information: Monthly Contest info & deadlines 2024-25
For descriptions of categories in each genre, please see the following files:
Magazine Category Descriptions
Newspaper Category Descriptions
Video/Audio/Broadcast Descriptions
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The first round of monthly contests (for content published in August- September ’24) for 2024-25 academic year will be open by September 16th. Submissions for Aug./Sept. are due by Oct. 3, 2024.
A note for online newspapers–if you are looking in the online link and don’t see the category you need, check out the newspaper categories as well. It is fine if you need to enter some of your work under “newspaper” if there isn’t an equivalent category under “online.”
Monthly contest entries are submitted via our online forms through Formstack. Please follow the links provided below and fill out all boxes.
Magazine Category:
Monthly Contest Entry Form– Magazine
Newspaper Category:
Monthly Contest Entry Form — Newspaper
Online Category:
Monthly Contest Entry Form — Online
Video/Audio/Broadcast Category:
Monthly Contest Entry Form — Video/Audio/Broadcast
Yearbook Category:
Monthly Contest Entry Form — Yearbook