{"id":7039,"date":"2021-10-10T17:21:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T01:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=7039"},"modified":"2021-10-10T17:26:56","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T01:26:56","slug":"out-of-the-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=7039","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A gift to all of my readers.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An incredibly nice surprise came in my e-mail yesterday. It was from Joshua Anderson of the Chess Journalists of America, informing me that I had won an award for the Best Online Blog in 2021. (The award was shared with Ray Linville, whose blog is at chess.com<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even better was the way that I won this award. Usually, he said, either the writer or the publisher is supposed to submit an entry. But “Dana Blogs Chess” was nominated by an anonymous reader. This reader didn’t know how to formally submit an entry, but asked Anderson to take a look at my blog. Anderson liked it so much that he officially entered it on my behalf!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have won two CJA awards in the past, way back in 2008<\/a> for two articles I wrote in Chess Life<\/em>. (Both received Honorable Mentions.) But somehow it never occurred to me to submit my blog for consideration. I have never written it for the purpose of earning money or recognition. I think also that a few years ago, there were probably more blogs to compete with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winning an award this year, though, means something different from what it would have meant ten years ago. It’s been such a tough year, with the pandemic ruling out any in-person competition until recently. As you know, about a year ago I decided to write my series on “50 Years of Chess,” because it was the only real way I could think of to keep the blog interesting and relevant during a time when I wasn’t playing. The retrospective has been a lot more work than I expected, and I had to wonder sometimes whether it was really worth it. So, this year more than any, I needed this kind of validation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, Chess Journalists of America. And thank you, anonymous reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An incredibly nice surprise came in my e-mail yesterday. It was from Joshua Anderson of the Chess Journalists of America, informing me that I had won an award for the Best Online Blog in 2021. (The award was shared with Ray Linville, whose blog is at chess.com.) Even better was the way that I won […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1363,14],"tags":[4852,2350,3665,4853,2250,4846,4854],"class_list":["post-7039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chess-life","category-current-news","category-literature","tag-50-years","tag-anonymous","tag-awards","tag-chess-journalists-of-america","tag-other-blogs","tag-pandemic","tag-validation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7039"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7045,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions\/7045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}