SND/Update

Dennis Varney, the lead sports designer at the Lexington Herald-Leader, has been named the 30th Edition Coordinator for SND’s upcoming Best of Newspaper Design™ Creative Competition.

Marshall Matlock made the announcement in his role as the Competition Committee director, a position he has held for the past 20 years. Matlock is professor emeritus at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, the competition’s co-sponsor.

Varney has been a facilitator at the annual judging for six years. He is currently overseeing his department’s transition from QuarkXPress and QPS to InDesign and DTI.

A Kentucky native and graduate of Western Kentucky University, Varney has worked in Lexington for almost five years. Before that, he was a page designer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Varney started his professional career in 1996 at the Times of Northwest Indiana where he worked on a year-long special project on the “Turn of the Century.” While at the Munster, Ind., newspaper he was entertainment editor and sports designer.

“Dennis Varney will make a strong leader for the Society’s 30 anniversary competition,” Matlock says. “We want the 30th year competition winners to represent more countries and to do that we have to encourage entries from more countries and Dennis as well as members of the Competition Committee will be central in accomplishing that goal.”

Language expansion in Call

Matlock and the SND office staff hope to use more resources to reach more publications in as many countries as possible. He expects to increase the number of languages the annual Call for Entries is translated in if the Society can get the translators. “We hope to go from four languages to at least six to eight for the next competition,” Matlock says, stressing that more translators are needed from the SND membership.

Anyone who would like to help with the translations of the Call for their primary language is encouraged to contact Elise Burroughs, SND’s executive director.

Send nominations for judges

SND is also taking nominations for judges for future competitions. Nominations, with information about the nominee, should be sent to the SND office at snd@snd.org. The office staff will put the information on a “master list” of possible judges. The list is used when it comes time to finalize judges for a given year. A person’s name remains on the list until he or she is selected or indicates he or she is not interested in judging. An effort is made to update information each year. For specific information on what is needed for each nomination visit the competition site.

SND members who wish to assist at the February 2009 judging may get information here. It takes about 50 facilitators (assistants) to help at the general judging, categories 2 through 19.

A new Competition Committee will be announced soon, according to Matlock. The Committee, made up of nine judging facilitators, appoints the 32 judges needed for each year’s judging and works on other assigned responsibilities to make the judging run smoothly.

For information about the competition and its committees, please attend the Competition Committee’s public meeting at the annual Workshop and Exhibition at SND Vegas this September. The meeting date and time will be set soon.