How does The Telegraph get the right to put "New England's 2006 Newspaper of the Year" at the top of the paper? Answer that question and you'll also find out why it's been almost two weeks since Teresa's last post.

There are two main steps to becoming the newspaper of the year. First, our editors, reporters, photographers, and page designers/copy editors put all their time and energy into producing outstanding work. Detailed investigative coverage, online databases, creative photo essays - our staff really goes all out.

Am I biased because I work for the paper? Maybe, but I would never want to work for a company I wasn't proud of. I get to see what goes on behind the scenes, what goes into getting the paper out every day and what goes into getting special projects off the ground. Let me tell you - it's a lot.

When snowstorms hit or the region starts flooding, people don't go home early. They stay late, as long as it takes to get the job done. If we're shorthanded because someone's sick or on vacation, people take on extra assignments and come in early or even on their days off.

All this hard work and dedication deserves some recognition, which brings us to the second step. The second step is not nearly as glamorous-sounding as the first step, as it consists of me, my stapler, a red Sharpie, and a four-foot-high stack of newspapers.

Our newsroom enters about half a dozen contests each year, the most important of which are those sponsored by the NHPA (New Hampshire Press Association), NEAPNEA (New England Associated Press News Executives Association), NENA (New England Newspaper Association), and NEPA (New England Press Association).

All four contests have a similar structure. Newspapers are divided into classes based on circulation (circulation numbers and/or daily/weekly/Sunday). You have categories for writing, photography, and design, and each category is broken down into smaller, more specific categories, such as education story, sports photo, or front page design. There are also special categories like General Excellence and Newspaper of the Year.

For each entry, I track down the necessary paper, tear out the necessary page(s), bracket the entry in red, and fill out and attach the appropriate label. All the entries for a category go into their own specially marked folder or envelope, and then all the folders or envelopes get packed up in a big box (along with a list of who's entering what in each category and the date it ran) and shipped out.

The basic concept is simple and straightforward, but it's very time consuming. For example, we entered our coverage of the Nashua superintendent issues in two categories for NHPA. This entails my pulling 18 papers from my secret contest morgue (which means 36 papers total), tearing out close to 50 pages (which means close to 100 pages total), bracketing the articles, filling out and stapling labels, and figuring out how on earth I'm going to *neatly* fold 50 pages of newsprint and fit them into an envelope. Whew.

It takes close to an hour and a half to put together *one* of the Nashua superintendent series. That's three hours for two series, which is almost half my day. And then there are all the other entries to pull, put together, package, and log.

Our news staff is excellent about helping me out - pulling papers on their own if they can track them down, and filling out their own labels if they're able. It's very much appreciated - not having to disappear into the morgue for an hour makes things much easier, as then I can keep fielding phone calls and e-mails as I work on contest entries.

I just put our NHPA entries in the mail. If you're interested in a closer look at a newspaper contest, you can check out their Web site. It's the contest info from 2006, but it really doesn't change from year to year.

It'll be a couple of months before we find out if we won anything, and we won't find out whether it was first, second, or third place until the actual awards banquet. We do have a pretty good track record with these contests, however, so we tend to be optimistic about the results.   

Thus, the conspicuous lack of blogging. I'd like to say that I'll be back to a more regular posting schedule, but, um, NEAPNEA has to be postmarked by May 18th.

Once NEAPNEA's over, though, the amazing JenO is going to teach me how to podcast. Not only will you be able to read my blog entries, you'll be able to listen to me reading my blog entries. If you'd like to go for the ultimate meta experience, you can read my blog entries while listening to me read my blog entries. The mind boggles.