Members of the UNC School of Journalism judged the competition, for which they were paid a nominal fee.

It was certainly a worthwhile activity, but after a time, we needed our staff memb er’s efforts full-time for the magazine and our festivals. At that point, we invited other publications to consider stepping up, but none did.

If anyone can make the British Guild model work, that would be grand.

Of course the awards, and a website listing names of members (put together through the efforts of Steve Hamburg – AABM donated the space), became really the only thing the guild did.

Agreed all around and that was my point in the comment regarding Dan Bradford. The NAGBW was a pain in the ass to run. Something more decentralized would have to be the model. Even in the absence of such an entity, I would like to see writers get together at major events for sit down discussions of issues of particular importance to them as a group and to host speaker series. An organization could grow out of something like that or not. In either event, we might be the better for simply just getting together as a group to talk once in a while. I thought about doing this during the CBC in Boston but became too busy. With GABF coming up, perhaps it’s time to revisit the issue.

With all due respect to AAB, I’m not sure it’s fair to expect any organization, most especially one that’s trying to turn a profit, to run a Writer’s Organization in its spare time.

The BGBW looks like a great model. If you read through their June ’09 newsletter, there’s actually a little section about how they got started: a CAMRA-related grassroots kind of thing.

The hard part, IMO, is finding the motivated person/people to make this sort of thing a reality in the States. The cynic in me says that most journalists are going to be too worried about trying to get paid for their freelancing to spend any substantial amount of time organizing, recognizing, and improving the work of other writers.

Ask Dan Bradford how big a pain in the butt running the NAGBW was for his staff. I think we should be looking at how the British guild manages to sustain itself, probably without a centralized organization and largely run through the Internet and volunteer work. Many others believe we don’t have any need for such an organization. In either event, folks should be discussing these issues.

Now that beer journalism has expanded with technology into print, online, video, radio, podcasts and even documentaries, it would be nice to see a return of the North American Guild of Beer Writers. The NAGBW last gave out its Quill & Tankard Awards at GABF in 2002 before becoming inactive. I say bring back the guild or some other form of it with a broader scope to encompass more than just writers. Awards always mean more when they come from your peers.