Can freelancers submit clips for awards?

I have been thinking about this recently.

Generally, papers supply state and national writing competitions with staff-written stories. Is there a way for freelancers to submit their work for consideration?

 

You mean like home-schooled kids winning a state championship in football?

Not gonna happen, unless you freelance exclusively for a grateful SE who finds something of yours worthy to enter.

 

If a freelancer writes something with a legit shot at winning an award (national, state, company-wide, whatever) I think it should be entered. However, any freelancer good enough to write award-winning prose should be hired full-time posthaste.

Unless, of course, they have a lucrative freelance trade and don't want to louse it up.

 

Paging Tim Tebow...

 

I think it depends on the circumstances -- were you fulltime and then went to freelancing?
I got shitcanned one year at a paper, but I was a dues-paying member of our state association. So, I entered the contest on my own, paid the entry fee, and won a second-place for one story. made my old paper look bad.
as an editor, i give equal weight to everything written from my former and current staff in a year.

 

I do too. In fact, my former reporter is the one who won an award at my state's press association. He was also the guy I hired.

Of course, I may be that rare editor who'd send in a freelancer's work if I feel it's deserving.

 

i do believe many contests stipulate that the work has to have been done by a regular staff member of the paper.

 

Rules preventing freelancers from entering contests are outdated and wrong.

Criteria could be established to prevent One-Time Willy from jumping in with a 7,000-word piece about show horses. But a legitimate freelancer should be allowed to join associations or enter contests.

 

Granted, the guy was a former sports writer in semi-retirement but it was a part-timer who broke the George O'Leary story for the Manchester (N.H.) newspaper and won an APSE top-5 for it.

 

I believe the guidelines for the Colorado Press Association require that writers must simply be "regularly assigned" or some such; no specifications for staff, freelance, or even paid at all.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Canadian division.

About twenty-five years ago, when I was just starting out, I submitted a feature to the Canadian National Magazine awards (cost of $50). Won the silver medal in sportswriting (paid out $500). Not as bad as it seems, mind you. The magazine I wrote the piece for was limited to five entries and chose two other stories that I wrote in its quota. I just thought this other one was better. (The folks with the awards foundation told me they would get a few every year from freelancers, few had ever made the list of five finalists and none had won.)

In the Canadian mag and news awards, the biggest in this small country, all is fair. Make a call to the outfit that stages the awards in your area.

YHS, etc