CreditCards.com Recognized for Journalistic Excellence

AUSTIN, Texas, March 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- CreditCards.com, the Internet's leading credit card comparison website, has won two "Best in Business" awards from the largest and most prestigious business journalism organization in the United States, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW).  

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The first award honored a CreditCards.com special project that examined the difficulty consumers have in reading and understanding the average credit card agreement. The "Credit Card Readability Project," (http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-agreement-readability-1282.php) used a software program that's commonly used in analyzing how difficult or easy it is to read school textbooks to review and rate more than 1,200 credit card agreements.

The study found that the average agreement in the United States is written at a 12th grade level -- well above the ability of four out of five adults to understand what they are reading. The analysis named the 10 most unreadable contracts, the 10 easiest to understand and the 10 wordiest.

The project also compared the average credit card agreement to familiar texts, including nursery rhymes, the book of Genesis in the King James Bible and the Declaration of Independence. Another component of the package was a video (http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/video-credit-card-statement-readability-man-on-street-1282.php) that captured the puzzlement of lawyers and college professors as they tried to comprehend an obtuse passage from a credit card agreement.

SABEW judges recognized the readability project for its "Creative use across multiple platforms" in the category for websites with 500,000 to 2.5 million average unique visitors per month.

The second SABEW award honored CreditCards.com for online feature writing in the same unique monthly visitor category for "Money and Prison" (http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/how-to-prepare-inmate-financially-jail-prison-1265.php). This package explored what happens to a person's finances once he or she becomes incarcerated and offered tips to help minimize the financial hit to those facing jail time. It is a topic that isn't often written about, but one that is of intense interest to the nearly 2 million incarcerated people in the United States and their spouses and loved ones. It is a fascinating new topic for the rest of us.

Both the readability project and the money and prison articles were written by CreditCards.com's senior writer, Connie Prater, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with more than 25 years experience writing and editing for print and online publications. The two awards will be presented on April 9, 2011, at the annual SABEW conference to be held at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. CreditCards.com's winning entries were selected from a record 904 stories published in 2010 and nominated by their respected news organizations.

"This recognition is a validation of the quality of reporting that we do day in and day out covering the credit card industry, as well as the caliber of journalists we have on staff," said Daniel P. Ray, CreditCards.com's Editor-in-Chief.

This is the second year in a row that CreditCards.com has been recognized by SABEW.  In 2010, the "Comprehensive Guide to the Credit CARD Act," (http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-law-interactive-1282.php), an interactive look at the landmark credit card reform law, was honored for creative use of online by a midsized website.

About CreditCards.com

CreditCards.com is the leading online credit card marketplace connecting consumers with multiple credit card issuers, including a majority of the 10 largest in the United States, based on credit card transaction volume. CreditCards.com, http://www.creditcards.com, enables consumers to search for, compare and apply for credit cards and offers credit card issuers an online channel to acquire qualified applicants.

SOURCE CreditCards.com