Tis the season....to complain about contests

Where are all the arts journalism contests?

Oh, there are a few out there. The Pulitzer, notably, has categories in music, theater, and letters (books). But look at the list of past winners, and it's clear that a daily reporter whose job entails writing about arts-life in a small town, for a small-circulation newspaper, does not a frequent winner make. I would be competing directly against writers at the New York Times and elsewhere, where reporters are actually given more than a couple of days to write a given story (not the case, generally, at my paper or other small papers I know of).

Beyond the Pulitzer, though, there are scant few national awards that specifically and exclusively focus on arts writing. In fact, I had an easier time finding an award for reporting on colon and rectal disease than reporting on the arts. And yet again, as I noted here last year, the Montana Newspaper Association failed to include an arts or entertainment category in its annual contest, despite the fact that every daily paper in the state has a weekly arts page or section (not true for agriculture, which still gets its own category).

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places?

Or maybe it's just the same lack of respect that plagues the American arts world in general -- the sense, broadly held, that it is frivolous and secondary to the big issues in life and society. Ah well.