By Old Cars Weekly Staff
 Driving Force won a 2012 Golden Quill Award in the Museums & Associations category. |
SEMA's Driving Force newsletter has won a 2012 Golden Quill Award in the Museums & Associations category. The award is issued by the staff of Old Cars Weekly to provide special recognition of literary achievement that boosts the hobby.
“The Golden Quill Award honors outstanding efforts by editors and their clubs in fostering progress in the old-car hobby, and the impact of the award is tremendous,” says Dr. Gerald Perschbacher, chief judge for the award.
In recent years, the quality and competition between publications has taken several steps higher. “As desktop publishing became more sophisticated, so did club magazines and newsletters,” adds Old Cars Weekly Editor Angelo Van Bogart. “Quite a number of national publications have reached such high quality that they could compete on the magazine rack of a bookstore. Those publications would be right at home beside news and features magazines. That’s how far our old-car hobby has come in publishing.”
To level the field, categories are designated based on size, complexity, paper stock and circulation. There is also a category of Honorable Mention.
Perschbacher explains: “National clubs have a larger financial base from which to operate, which means more color and fancy design techniques often abound. Regional clubs have lesser circulation and, in general, significantly lower budgets. Some national clubs pay professional editors, whereas regional clubs often do not have the funds. So the categories are necessary for all clubs to have fair consideration.”
“Our hobby continues to make good progress in publications,” says Van Bogart, “and I anticipate that future competition will reflect an even greater series of advances for 2013.”