With just over 1,500 entries from 40 publications in the state, this year marks the largest-ever contest field in Arizona Press Club history.

One of the most important changes in the 1999 contest was the addition of the John Kolbe Award for politics and government reporting. The award honors the late political reporter and columnist John Kolbe, who wrote about Arizona politics for more than a quarter of a century at the Phoenix Gazette and The Arizona Republic.

Kolbe was the recipient of the Press Club's Distinguished Service award last year.

A few other changes have occurred within the Arizona Press Club over the past few months. In an attempt to expand our function beyond sponsoring an annual contest and scholarships, we held a seminar as a prelude to our 76th annual banquet this year, with guest speakers for writing, photo and graphic design.

Back in October, we took a seminar on the road to the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff with David Leibowitz of The Arizona Republic and John Dougherty of Phoenix New Times, who generously volunteered as our guest speakers.

All these changes and the contest itself werre possible only thanks to some extremely hard-working board members. They include:

*Amy Silverman, Phoenix New Times, vice president. Ever knowledgeable and a top-flight mediator, Amy was really more co-president than vice president on the board this year. She did pretty much everything, from recruiting board members to maintaining our web site (www.azpressclub.org) to making sure we had a liquor license for today's banquet.

*Chris Fiscus, The Arizona Republic, treasurer. We could not function without Chris, since he writes the checks, invests our money and makes sure that the rest of us financially inept journalists keep our spending in line. And best of all, he's calm and always helpful.

*Jill Jorden Spitz, Arizona Daily Star, contest chair. Organized and all-business, Jill was responsible for the entire contest, including reviewing all the entries and overseeing more than 80 judges from all over the U.S. It's not a job for the faint of heart...

*Maureen O'Connell, Arizona Daily Star, secretary. A stable and efficient influence on the board, Mo took notes and handled all our group email sendoffs with aplomb.

Lastly, a lot of our board members have been involved with the Press Club for several years now and we're ready for some new folks to take our place.

So, anyone who's interested in becoming a member of the board should please contact one of us and we'll make sure you are invited to the next meeting.

Thanks for all your entries and congratulations to the winners.

Cheers,

STEPHANIE INNES
Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Press Club president