43rd Digital Competition Facts and Figures

This year’s SND Best of Digital News Design competition has attracted a record 1,948 entries from 30 countries. Last year judges worked through 1,764 pieces of immersive, interactive and visual journalism from 29 countries.

Like last year, the largest number of entries came from the United States. U.S. news designers submitted a little more than 1,000 entries this year, making up almost 55% of the total. This is slightly down from 1,191 entries from the U.S. last year.

U.S. submissions far exceeded the levels from other countries. The United Kingdom (176), and Denmark (96) were the next largest sources of entries, followed by Finland (79) and Brazil (77).

The Washington Post, The New York Times and Reuters were the top three sources of entries again this year, together making up 30% (549) of submissions. The Washington Post alone accounted for 13% (244). All up 137 publishers submitted work, up from 122 last year.

The majority of entries (71%) to this year’s competition came from large organizations with more than 300 employees, more than 5 million average monthly visitors, and/or more than 100,000 subscribers. However, the number of entries from medium-sized organizations rose by 162, to 354, or 20% of the total. These are publishers employing between 75 and 300 people, generating 1 million to 5 million average monthly visitors or more than 10,000 subscribers.

There was no stand-out category this year, with features, photography and infographics the top three. Of the 1,948 submissions, 97 were for the design of features; 86 for the use of photography, and 85 for information graphics about the environment or science.

Unlike last year, when designs related to Health/Coronovirus attracted 217 (12%) entries, this year, submissions were more evenly distributed with all categories accounting for less than 5% of entries.