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It's the fifth year of The Irish Times SchoolMag competition and our 'paper' anniversary is the the talk of the Times. Why? Because each year the standard gets even better and some former winners of the competition are now making their way into the media and making an impact. Irish students are well able to produce publications that reflect their own peculiarities, quirks and neuroses - in short, exactly what we're looking for! We have seen some inspired design using the sparest of resources and we're looking forward to some more genuine innovation this year. No one slipped the net - as in previous years some of our best writers came from some of the least inspiring publications, and the most stunning layout and imagery often emerged from low key productions.

Last year's overall winner, Loreto Secondary School Clonmel with their masterpiece 'Bespoke' was a real eye-catcher - bright, smart and edgy with bags of personality. Schoolmag teams in 2008/2009 took on politics, religion, fashion, socialising, music, sport, cooking, literature, culture, local issues, student politics and much more. This year's competition promises to be bigger than ever and the youngest voices of the Irish media are getting louder and prouder. Roll on SchoolMag 2010!

Louise Holden
Contributor, The Irish Times

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WHAT THE JUDGES ARE LOOKING FOR The design of your publication will be taken into account as well as written content. Writing The winning articles in last year's writing category stood out for a number of reasons. The following characteristics were common to all our winning articles:

Accuracy and care in the use of language - Sloppy writing did not impress the judges. We were especially attracted to articles that were obviously written in the voice of the student - cliché free, fresh writing caught our attention every time.

Passion and the personal touch - Our winning writers spoke about their own realm of experience. Many put hours of research into broadening their knowledge of a chosen topic but they all wrote about subjects they were passionate about or had direct experience of, whether it was football, advertising, politics or social work.

Objectivity - The mistake that many aspiring journalists make is to indulge in 'ranting' on one side of a subject rather than attempting to present a balanced account. We tended to discard articles that were too strident.

Insight - Students who made a genuine attempt to throw new light on a subject, using surveys, interviews or research, always caught the attention of the judges. We were also engaged by articles that revealed some of the subculture of school life that general readers would not ordinarily encounter.

Creativity The creative prizes take a very broad approach. They may be awarded for a photograph, a fashion spread, a cartoon, a music spread, use of typography, the overall design of the magazine . . . The scope of these awards is truly limitless in an attempt to encourage entrants to bring their own talents to the table. The trick is to achieve excellence. This can be by producing a consistently stylish magazine which plays by the existing rules of magazine design but does it with flair. Alternatively, a magazine or a section/visual contribution to a magazine may stand out for being fresh, new, innovative and completely re-writing the rulebook.