IF YOU WERE a Best of Newspaper Design™ Creative Competition coordinator between 1989 and 2006, please join me on stage. There’s something I need your help with.
While the coordinators are making their way forward, if you have ever been an assistant at the competition, please stand and remain standing.
If you have ever been a judge at the competition, please stand and remain standing.
If you have ever won an award in SND’s Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition™, please stand.
Now, if you ever found inspiration in an award-winning entry, please stand.
Look at this room! And think of who would be standing if I could ask those questions of all 2,500-plus members of our Society. SND’s annual competition – love it, hate it, want to change it – has had a profound affect on our careers.
Thank you. Please be seated.
In 1989, for the 10th Edition, SND made three changes with its Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition™. It began moving to a calendar year from a mid-year to mid-year schedule. It moved the judging to Syracuse University that March. And C. Marshall Matlock became the onsite judging director.
That year there were 7,150 entries from 77 publications. Seventeen years later, the competition has more than doubled in size and is the benchmark for designers and artists from around the world.
And one man guided us through it all.
Born Nov. 20, 1943 in Benton Harbor, Michigan, he received his Bachelors of Science and Masters of Arts degrees from Central Michigan University
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He joined the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1973 where he taught mass communications, news writing, advance reporting, editing, graphics and news design.
He was director of student affairs and executive assistant to three deans -- as well as the school’s first testing director for grammar, punctuation and spelling. During his early years at Syracuse he directed the Empire State School Press Association, the School Press Institute and the Summer Sessions Pre-college Program.
He won numerous state and national awards and has been an officer or director in several state and national professional organizations including “Outstanding Teacher of the Year” in 1971 by the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association and the “Gold Key” award, the highest honor presented a person by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, as well as top honors from the state of Texas, the University of Maryland and the Poynter Institute.
If I listed all of his professional service, we’d be here until tomorrow morning.
When he retired from teaching in May 2006 after 33 years at Syracuse University, the school named him professor emeritus for his long and dedicated service.
And yes, believe it or not, he finds plenty of time for family and friends. Marshall is well known for his loving generosity.
But let’s get back to the Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition. In the years since the competition moved to Syracuse, the Society has received 144,757 entries, resulting in 15,339 winners from more than 400 judges. He also edited the 14th through 23rd editions of the award book, The Best of Newspaper Design™
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For the romantics in the crowd, what heading the competition all these years means is that Marshall has spent every Valentine’s Day sorting through entries since 1990.
We’re sorry we had to hijack the program, Marshall. You see, Marshall also directs all of the AV and all of the scripts for the awards ceremony each year. That means years on end without dinner on Saturday night during SND conventions for Marshall! Two of his former students told him that I was honoring Syracuse, the competition and former coordinators. We knew that was the only way he’d ever leave his post at the back of the room.
For all of his work in the Society, he won President’s Awards in 1990, ’92, ’99 and 2002. The Society has more in mind tonight.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is the Society’s highest honor, having been presented to only eight others since first initiated in 1993. A committee selects the award winner with nominations accepted from any member. Tonight’s winner was nominated by many of those on stage with me now.
On behalf of the Society for News Design, past and current coordinators and Syracuse alums -- especially a couple here on stage -- it is my privilege to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to C. Marshall Matlock.
