Periodical Staff Writing for Internal Audiences

2010 Circle of Excellence Awards Program

Judges Report

A great in-house publication both informs and inspires. For most, the mission is not just to tell readers about people and departments they wouldn't ordinarily encounter, but also to make them proud of the institution they belong to.

The 2010 entrants in this category (many fewer than in 2009; budgets are evidently tightening) went far toward achieving those goals. Several publications, such as Duke's and the University of Bristol's, boast eye-catching design. Many obviously have editors who are terrific judges of story topics. To name just a few of the stories that attracted us: the College of Charleston profiled a skydiving professor; Tufts ran a piece on the rediscovery of some antique glass models of ocean invertebrates, crafted long ago as teaching tools but then lost; the University of Washington offered a lighthearted article on the resident campus ducklings; and Bristol explored a Buddhism expert's understanding of the Eastern way of death. Other stories were less attention-grabbing but provided critical reader service, such as Duke's on the Personal Assistance Service for employees, as well as most of the pieces in the Claremont Graduate University student periodical (a newsletter notable for its witty, entertaining prose style).

All this deserves congratulation, especially as in-house publications are generally kept on extremely tight budgets. But the judges felt that the writing in this category would benefit if the editors concentrated more consistently on presenting readers with fresh, unusual, and/or entertaining information-not only at the macro level of story choice but also at the micro level, sentence by sentence: eliminating clichés, including only those quotes that add interest or new material, fleshing out events with telling details, and starting every story with something intriguing. We found that many promising pieces bogged down early on; an article about fascinating new research would lead with a summary of background knowledge, or a literary quote from an unrelated source, or a description of how the researcher came to his/her field. We recommend following the old journalism maxim: the lead should be whatever anecdote or bit of information is so interesting that you'd tell your friends about it over a beer.

Silver Award: Stanford University School of Medicine, Inside Stanford Medicine shone because of articles packed with intriguing information and well-chosen quotes. (One example: a piece about CT scanning of Egyptian mummies quoted a radiologist who said that, in the scanner, mummies have an advantage over living patients because "when you tell them not to breathe, they don't breathe.") The explanations of the science were also clear, interesting, and lively. Although the quality of the articles submitted was uneven, the best were so good they made the judges want to read back issues over their lunch hour. Inside Stanford Medicine received the only medal CASE permitted in this category for 2010.