The American Society of News Editors annually recognizes excellence in the journalist crafts.

The Distinguished Writing Awards were inspired by former ASNE President Eugene Patterson and first awarded in 1979. They and the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting are designed to foster, recognize, and reward excellence in news writing, while the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Online Storytelling recognizes the multimedia impact on news coverage and includes blogs, video, audio, graphics, photo galleries and interactive elements in storytelling.

The Community Service Photojournalism Award recognizes a body of work that contributes to an improvement or heightened awareness in the community through photography.

And, open to reporters, columnists, editorial writers, photographers and graphic artists, the Batten Medal celebrates a body of work that represents the journalistic values of compassion, courage, humanity and a deep concern for the underdog.

The awards are presented at the Society’s annual meeting, which is held in the spring. Deadline for entries is Feb. 1. 

ASNE is grateful to the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit educational institution committed to journalistic excellence, which has been our partner in administering these awards and uses portions of the honored work to compile best practices. Until 2008-09 Poynter produced the series Best Newspaper Writing, based on the competition. Copies of the the 2008-09 and earlier editions are available for purchase through Poynter.