I’m a member of the Online News Association. I pay my dues. But, man, is the ONA one cheap bastard. Every year they ask online journalists to pony up and spend time designing a logo for them, for free, with no guarantee that anything will ever come from it. That’s devotion, right? Riiiiiiiight.

Not only that, they list some of the past winning logos in this year’s call for entries … and they forget to mention who designed the winning logo. Yes, that’s the thanks you will get. If you win, you get free admission to the ONA conference, and after the conference you will never be mentioned again.

From their website, this is how you enter:

Send your 7.125” wide by 1.125” tall, 300 dpi submissions to Danny Dougherty at ONA09logo@journalists.org with the subject “ONA Conference Logo” and you’re in! Please keep in mind that we may ask the winning artist to edit his/her design as the conference planning process continues. Acceptable file formats include PDF, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Gif, JPEG, PNG, Tiff, EPS, Freehand, SVG or as a static SWF.

Deadline is Monday, Feb. 9, at 5 p.m. ET.

This seems to be a trend with newspapers: run news about the winner of a logo contest and fail to include an image of the winning logo. “Tell, don’t show” is the rule here. Then again, this article appears with the byline “Reader-Submitted News,” which means this is all a reader’s fault. Hmmmm. Here’s the article, anyway: Monsignor Donovan student from Jackson wins diocesan logo contest.