Missouri University disclosed this past summer, in the course of its communications with the NPPA, that the School of Journalism was unable to identify any outside direct financial support to the Pictures of the Year International competition. Despite the fact that fundraising and revenue support are the sole contractual responsibility of the University - NPPA worked for several weeks with Catherine Mohesky and David Rees to develop a budget that would help both organizations work around this problem and preserve a contest and a partnership that was formed in 1957. Both organizations had conducted similar contests for the decade prior to 1957.

The partnership was important to both parties. NPPA gained the organizational support needed to pull off an international contest that had grown to 2,000 entrants submitting over 30,000 images for judging in multiple categories. Missouri gained the endorsement of the NPPA -- and 1,500 NPPA member entrants. A yearbook was published which encourages the contest entry of many photojournalists and is -- in Missouri's description -- "the most enduring public representation of POY". While the relationship between Missouri and the NPPA has been problematic for decades -- it nevertheless seemed to be well worth saving.

Missouri sought to impose new fees on NPPA entrants as a method of creating the missing contest revenues. NPPA opposed the new fees on contractual grounds and took the position that all entry fees should eventually be abolished. An entry fee of $50 to $75 dollars is an obstacle for many photojournalists that operate in the developing world and are a disincentive for domestic journalists too. In lieu of new entry fees, NPPA proposed granting money outright to Missouri sufficient to run the contest this year. Missouri agreed to negotiate using this approach and submitted a grant proposal to NPPA. NPPA offered approximately half this sum, an amount necessary to cover direct contest expenses from the call for entries to selecting the winners. The remaining portion covered the expenses for prizes and trophies and student labor, an amount that could be postponed until sponsorships could be found or which could be omitted altogether if necessary. At no time did NPPA offer to pay for permanent University salaries or overhead costs.

Your leadership, the Executive Committee of the Board and -- later in the process -- the full Board, exercised careful stewardship of your funds and offered thoughtful and creative approaches to solving this problem. Your Board representatives spent hours on the telephone attempting to find a consensus as to how NPPA and Missouri might work around a lack of outside funding for the contest. Your Association also offered to help in any future fundraising efforts mounted by Missouri in an effort to put the contest on a more solid financial footing.

This money offer was made to Missouri on Tuesday morning November 6th and rejected by them on Thursday evening November 8th. Missouri subsequently sent a letter addressed to me "terminating" the contract between NPPA and Missouri. Your leadership has decided to announce a venue and partners for a new contest in the coming weeks -The Best of Photojournalism.

For its part Missouri cites alleged contract violations on NPPA's part two years ago as justification for its action. The violations cited are a failure to associate the University with the POY Yearbook and a failure to directly recognize the corporations that supported POY in the Yearbook. This is linked in their statement with the lack of outside funding for this year's contest.

The Best of Photojournalism will succeed because this will be a contest by photojournalists for photojournalists. Bringing both the television and the still contest together will enhance the event. Association members will receive both the resulting yearbook and the television DVD. It is reasonable to assume that the new contest venue will attract many sponsors and that costs can be controlled or defrayed. Every effort will be made to find sponsors for this new event. A call for entries will go out as soon as the contest can be structured and the brochure designed. BOP promises to become a pre-eminent event for photojournalists and to be an annual feature on our calendars as enduring as any of the other well known events the Association sponsors.