Call for Campus Columnists

Jeff Zaslow College Columnist Award Contest

A letter from Joel Brinkley, NSNC Education Chair

Joel Brinkley

Hello everyone. I am writing to encourage college writers to enter our 16th annual contest for columnists at collegiate newspapers. Each year, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation sponsors a contest for columnists at collegiate newspapers.

First prize is a $1,000 scholarship. Second prize is $500. Third prize is $250.

In addition, the top winner will be the guest of the NSNC at its 2014 conference in Washington D.C., June 26-29. The Education Foundation will pay the winner’s airfare, hotel, shuttle and registration fees. He or she also will be listed in the NSNC’s College Columnist Hall of Fame.

Please help me spread word of the contest by circulating and/or posting the flier and entry form. The Education Foundation’s page on our website has general information. Click on the links below for the entry form, which includes contest rules, and also the flier to send along to your old campus newspaper for its bulletin board or favorite journalism professors to announce to their students.

• Click to open a PDF of the 2014 Scholarship Entry Form
• Click to open a PDF of 2014 Scholarship Contest Flier

Click for a PDF of a flier promoting the 2014 Jeff Zaslow College Columnist Award of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation.

The Jeff Zaslow College Columnist Award is open to undergraduates (including seniors) who write bylined general interest, editorial page or op-ed page columns for their campus newspaper, either print or online. Sports columns, movie reviews, magazine columns and other specialized columns are not eligible. Students may submit no more than one entry, consisting of three columns.

There is no entry fee. Judges are professional newspaper columnists.

The deadline for entering the 2014 contest is March 15, 2014. The three sample columns must have been published or posted between March 1, 2013, and Feb. 28, 2014.

For more information, contact me by email at joelgbrinkley@yahoo.com.

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists, founded in 1977, is America’s largest association of newspaper columnists. The NSNC Education Foundation’s core mission is to foster training opportunities for columnists and others interested in column writing. Jeffrey Zaslow was a best-selling author and Wall Street Journal columnist who died in February 2012 in an auto accident at the age of 53.

Thank you for helping us inform student columnists about the Jeff Zaslow College Columnist Award Scholarship Contest.

Sincerely,

Joel