Judging Procedures and Criteria

IMPORTANT DATES:

When assigning panels, the Awards Committee tries to accommodate the judges’ preferred category and date. You will be able to screen and score all entries at your own pace within the judging period assigned to you. 

Round 2 End Date: 11:59pm (ET) April 8^th, 2026 Best Canadian Local News

1. To make a submission to the awards you must be a member of RTDNA Canada. You can become a member here: RTDNA Canada Membership
2. Familiarize yourself with the Award Submission Rules and Entry Guidelines (PDF) as soon as possible. Any applicant who fails to adhere to the written instructions or submit a complete application package may be disqualified.
3. RTDNA Canada’s Code of Ethics serves as the basis for judging standards. The entries you are judging must follow the Code of Ethics.
4. Each entry will be judged in the category in which it is submitted unless it is disqualified.
5. There must be only one winner in each category. There cannot be co-winners.
6. Judging criteria vary for different award categories. Score 1-10 for each criterion. Criteria are listed at the bottom of each submission and can be viewed here for Regional and here for National awards. Judges will base their scoring on what is contained in the submission.
7. Criteria has been added for judges to consider the resources available to a news organization so that small news organizations with minimal resources have an equal opportunity of winning as large news organizations with many resources.
8. Entries will be judged up to the maximum duration allowed in each category.
9. Only working web links will be considered. Do not judge links on websites which require registration or password access.
10. Commercial theme music is permitted in audio entries but should not be judged as part of the entry. Only theme music created by the new organizations should be judged.
11. Regional judges are not obliged to select a winner in a category if, in the opinion of the judges, the entry does not meet the established criteria.
12. The winning entries in each Region will go on to be judged for the Best Canadian Local News Awards.

RTDNA Canada’s judges come from a wide variety of backgrounds and affiliations – ranging from people working at small, private, news organizations to large networks, to faculty of journalism programs. As many Canadian journalists work for a handful of large employers, many of our judges come from large news organizations in this country’s very concentrated media landscape.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST 

We have taken certain measures to minimize conflict of interest. For example, individuals are assigned to judge entries that originate in other regions of the country. Similarly, journalists who work at the National level are asked to judge Regional entries and vice versa.

From time to time, a judge will flag us about a potential conflict of interest, and we will rule whether to assign them elsewhere or leave them as assigned. We trust in the professionalism of judges to vote for excellence even if an entry was submitted by the “competition.” Looking at our former judges and their track record, we would say that our trust is well placed.

CONFIDENTIALITY

We do not release the names of our judges.

To ensure the confidentiality of members’ submissions and maintain the integrity of the awards, we ask you to keep the information assigned to you private. 

Specifically, you undertake to:

1. Respect the confidential nature of all submissions and not disclose information in submissions, in any way whatsoever, to third parties; 

2. Use such information as is disclosed to you only for the express purpose of scoring submissions assigned to you, and for no other purpose. 

If you have any questions or concerns or would like to flag a potential conflict of interest, please contact us at awards@rtdnacanada.com.

We are also sensitive to Canada’s employment climate and that some of the country’s premier journalists have found their job status has changed – sometimes of their own choice, sometimes not. Consequently, some of our judges are self-employed and others have taken a break from their retirement to judge for us. Their employment status has not diminished their ability to judge journalistic excellence.

We are beholden to all our judges – regional, national, faculty, freelance and retired – for the time and expertise that they donate to us annually!

There would be no RTDNA Canada Awards without you.

Please click the links to view the Awards Submissions Rules and Entry Guidelines as well as the Regional and National Award categories.