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Our Best Effort

by Peter J. Proko--Editor-in-Chief
For me, part of the fun of being a journalist is having the ability to tell the general public about the things they have yet to hear about. It’s one of the main reasons I was so intrigued by the profession during my early high school years. I mean, let’s face it, who doesn’t like to be the first person to know something and then blab to everyone about it? It’s empowering in a way without any direct authority.

But, now we live in a society consumed by social media where the big scoops are forced to be delivered via Twitter because the luxury of saving it for the morning edition is all but lost thanks to the 24-hour news cycle. Hard to imagine Woodward and Bernstein would have been able to condense the magnitude of Watergate in 140 characters or less, but I digress.

Because of this shift in reporting, I love working on our annual Best of the Best issue. What you hold in your hands is the culmination of a year’s worth of work by this magazine’s unbelievably talented editorial staff. Hundreds of nominations were made, several arguments ensued and, in the end, 150 winners were crowned. It’s not breaking news per se, but it still allows us scribes to deliver worthwhile exclusivity to our readers.

We pride ourselves on being the leading publication in South Jersey and our Best of the Best feature, like all the other stories you’ll read in our pages, gives us the opportunity to provide you with an amalgamation of hyper-local content you don’t find anywhere else. So, let us be your guide to the greatest people, places and things in South Jersey, starting on Page 54. This comprehensive roundup, which is also made up of readers’ choices, consists of handpicked winners in food and drink, health and beauty, retail and lifestyle categories. By design, there are no obvious choices here, and that’s part of the challenge we give ourselves each year. The result is our finest Best of the Best issue we’ve ever produced, which is saying quite a lot.

Kind regards,
Peter J. Proko
Editor-in-Chief

Published (and copyrighted) in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 4 (July, 2013).
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