- Newsbiscuit Editorial Team
- 15 minutes ago
It's the time of year for celebrating the work of everyone who contributes to NewsBiscuit as writers, editors, cartoonists and the various backroom activities that keep this site running.
We've had a fair few new writers join us this year - welcome - and hopefully this post will find itself opened by people who don't know that much about NewsBiscuit, so a little background might help.
The site exists to provide a space for aspiring and existing comedy writers to hone their comedy writing skills. We don't pay for submissions, but equally don't claim copyright to published or unpublished offerings. None of the editors or other people involved in running the site get paid, and any funds received through the sale of books and donations is used to keep the site running and to satisfy our legal obligations. If you have bought one or more of our books this year (or read them via Amazon Kindle Unlimited - we get paid per page read), thank you. The same goes to anyone who had donated during the year.
There are five categories in this annual competition plus the ultimate Writer of the Year - the person who through a combination of fine writing and consistent persistence has been published often enough to accrue more points than any other writer on the site.
Before that we'd like to acknowledge all the writers who have submitted work in the various formats we publish, regardless of whether you were published or not. Without your contribution we wouldn't have a site to run. This year we have published contributions from nearly one hundred writers. We have published 2282 Front Pages, News in Briefs, Features and Headlines. In addition we attributed 85 hat-tips to writers who pitched in to help improve or just contribute to other persons' submissions.
And let's not forget about the cartoons and the people who create them. We don't include cartoons in the Writer of the Month competition, so there aren't any points to add up, but this year 757 cartoons were published originating from just twelve contributors. In alphabetical order they were: BillClay, Deskpilot, Granger, hughdwink, joe, kman3609, Lockjaw, Modelmaker, sdferris5, Throngsman and watchermark. Of special note is the contributions by Modelmaker who has produced over 500 cartoons and Lockjaw (over 200) who provide the lion's share of the cartoons.
The first category is for the Hat Tip - this generates one point per hat-tip and this year it feels like there's been more collaboration than in previous years. Hopefully that will continue to increase. The top ten contributors, ranked from number one to number ten are:
| Hat Tip WOTY |
1 | Deskpilot |
2 | FlashArry |
3 | sinnick |
4 | Modelmaker |
5 | SteveB |
6 | Lockjaw |
7 | james_doc |
8 | simonjjames |
9 | Sir Lupus |
10 | Titus |
well done Deskpilot, and many thanks to those other contributors.
The next category is Headlines. A difficult medium to be funny in as the writer has a short character count to write a topical (usually) joke with a powerful punchline. But it still only attracts one point each per headline! Out of over 1200 headlines the authors who were most frequently published, again in rank order and listing the top ten, are:
Headline WOTY | |
1 | Deskpilot |
2 | mcdabble |
3 | tonymc |
4 | Titus |
5 | Modelmaker |
6 | MrQ |
7 | bigbadbob |
8 | dominic_mcg |
9 | jim Skinz |
10 | Adrian Bamforth |
Again, congratulations to Deskpilot. McDabble gets an honourable mention with nearly 140 headlines published.
The Features award (it's listed as LA on the monthly stats, a hang-over from the old site when it was called Left Alert despite featuring on the right hand side of the page for the last few years) is awarded to longer or more off-beat submissions and attracts four points. The top ranked contributors to this category, (I've included more than ten as everyone from FlashArry and below are equally ranked) with number one listed first are:
Features WOTY | |
1 | Lockjaw |
2 | Deskpilot |
3 | SteveB |
4 | Alba Late |
5 | ChrisF |
6 | sinnick |
7 | Sydalg |
8 | FlashArry |
9 | hokeyloci |
10 | james_doc |
11 | jeremynh |
12 | nicka |
13 | rowly |
So congrats to Lockjaw who collates and produces the monthly horoscope.
News-in-Briefs are (generally) shorter than the Front Page offerings and accrue two points in the WOTM competition. Typically two a day except on weekends where we tend to publish one. However this isn't a hard and fast rule with extra NiBs published when there's enough publishable material and/or there are some so topical they would spoil otherwise. The top ten authors are:
NiB WOTY | |
1 | wrenfoe |
2 | Deskpilot |
3 | Throngsman |
4 | eppursimuove |
5 | jeremynh |
6 | billclay |
7 | Sully |
8 | Titus |
9 | simonjjames |
10 | james_doc |
Gratz to Wrenfoe for heading this category. So successful we named an arbitrary rule after him (the Wren Rule)
Finally, before we get to Writer of the Year, we have the Front Page winners. The Front Page is the category many of the writers aspire to, usually but not always a longer form prose.
Front Page WOTY | |
1 | Deskpilot |
2 | eppursimuove |
3 | jeremynh |
4 | Throngsman |
5 | Sully |
6 | james_doc |
7 | billclay |
8 | SteveB |
9 | nicka |
10 | wrenfoe |
Desktop being top of the list shouldn't be a surprise to regular readers of NewsBiscuit, as he is so often on the Front Page and wins Writer of the Month more often than not.
Which brings us to the Writer of the Year award, gained through amassing the most points throughout the year. Deskpilot wins the ultimate accolade, and well deservedly. Not only does Deskpilot regularly score points in all the categories in each month, he scores highly. Unrelated to this he also does a lot of background stuff for this site, which is generally unreported.
Well done Deskpilot.
Writer of the Year | |
1 | Deskpilot |
2 | eppursimuove |
3 | wrenfoe |
4 | Throngsman |
5 | mcdabble |
6 | jeremynh |
7 | Titus |
8 | Modelmaker |
9 | tonymc |
10 | billclay |
Happy New Year toall our readers, writers, editors and backroom people
Image: OleksandrPidvalnyi - Pixabay
