The Breeders’ Cup Media Awards honor excellence in coverage of the Breeders' Cup World Championships. There are four awards that will celebrate outstanding writing and communication of the Championships in 2008: The Joe Hirsch Award for Outstanding Newspaper writing, Bill Leggett Award for Outstanding Magazine writing, the Online Writing Award, and the Social Media Award.

To enter the competition for these awards, contestants may enter one submission per category with the exception of the Social Media award. However, contestants may not enter the same submission into one of the other categories.

The submissions for the Newspaper, Magazine and Online writing awards must be focused on covering some aspect of the 2008 Breeders’ Cup: an advance story on a race, an individual profile, column, business article on the organization and structure of the event, or actual race story.  No question and answer interviews will be accepted.

Social Media Award
The social media award is being introduced this year to recognize new forms of media communication.
Due to the recent emergence of certain forms of Social Media, the time frame for submissions has been expanded to Sept. 30, 2009.The criteria for this award is as follows:

Social Media Award Criteria
• Twitter
o Must have over 200 followers
o Must have over 30 Breeders’ Cup related Tweets (between Oct. 1, 2008 – Sept. 30, 2009)
o Must be Re-Tweeted over 20 times to demonstrate influence (Can be non-Breeders’ Cup related)
o Must have Re-Tweeted at least 1 Breeders’ Cup Tweet

• Blog
o Must have over 10 posts about horseracing (between Oct. 1, 2008-Sept. 30, 2009)
„X Thirty percent of “horseracing” posts must mention Breeders’ Cup
o Average number of comments per submitted post must be over 10

Mailing Instructions 
For the Newspaper, Magazine and Online writing awards, please send by postal service, air mail or overnight courier service, one original of the article and two plain copies of the article in word documents without the author’s name or publication. You may also submit a copy of the original article from the publication, but you must cover completely your name and publication in all places. For the Social Media award, please mail two sets of copies of the 30 “Breeders’ Cup Tweets,” or for Bloggers, two sets of copies of your 10 posts.

Please send you submissions for arrival no later than Sept. 30, 2009, to Jim Gluckson at the address below.  A panel of experts will determine the winners in each category. The award winners will be announced at the National Turf Writers Association annual dinner on Nov. 4 in California.

Please mail submissions to:
Jim Gluckson
Breeders’ Cup Ltd.
One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
15th Floor
New York, NY 10017