Best of SNO is OPEN!

/in ,

It’s the most exciting time of the year (in the SNO office anyway): Best of SNO opens today!

But wait. Don’t go running to your dashboard to submit just yet…

Before you can submit to Best of SNO, you will need to confirm that your site data is accurate. To do so, click on the SNO Badges section of your site’s dashboard and toggle to the “Site Data” tab. Please carefully double check all fields, as this is the data we use when generating plaques and recognizing your site on BestofSNO.com.

Once you’ve done that, you can navigate to the “Best of SNO” tab and start submitting. Every year, we evaluate and make revisions to the submission guidelines, and here are this year’s requirements for eligible stories:

  1. Only one story can be submitted from your site on any given weekday (submissions are closed over the weekends).

  2. Stories must be 300 words in length, with the exception of audio or video submissions.

  3. Stories must have a byline with the writer’s first and last name.

  4. Stories must be submitted within 60 days of being published.

  5. If the story contains images, they must be original.

  6. If a featured image is used, it must have a caption and attribution.

  7. All content must be created by publication student staff members.

Submissions that meet those guidelines will be reviewed by members of the Distinguished Sites Committee. On average, between 10-15% will be selected for publication each day. Last year, we received over 16,000 submissions from almost 600 schools, and we published just over 2,400 of them. As the numbers show, it’s very competitive. Please don’t get discouraged if your first few submissions aren’t published!

And, because there’s a presidential election this year, we’re on the lookout for election-specific stories! Whether you’re in Milwaukee or Chicago and got to directly report on either party’s national conventions, or you’re in a small town and wrote an awesome profile about students volunteering for either campaign, we want to see it. BestofSNO.com will highlight the best election coverage by high school and college journalism programs in our “2024 Election” category.

Sites that have at least one submission published on Best of SNO earn the Excellence in Writing badge – one of six badges in SNO’s Distinguished Sites program. The remaining badges will open for submissions on Monday, October 7. We’ll send a separate newsletter with more info about those badges soon, so be sure to watch your inbox.

We’re so excited to see your work! Happy reporting!

(Now you can run to your dashboard to submit…)