News-Press NOW Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

What's confirmed: two editions, one closed window, no city named

Two years, 2025 and 2026, make up the entire confirmed history of News-Press NOW's Readers' Choice ballot. The most recent round opened January 8, 2026 and closed February 26, listed on the Second Street platform at newspressnow.secondstreetapp.com/RC-2026 as a single nomination-and-voting ballot rather than a nominate-first, vote-later structure.

News-Press NOW itself does not publish a city or coverage area beyond Missouri for this ballot, so this page names only the state and the organizer, nothing more specific. Once that window shut, the trail goes cold: nothing spells out category names, nothing caps how often a supporter may vote, and no date yet marks when the next round begins.

How many categories run, and how often one person may vote, is not stated; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One combined ballot, not a nominate-then-vote sequence

Second Street hosts plenty of markets that split the process: a nomination window first, a separate voting stage weeks later. News-Press NOW's 2026 listing is coded differently on the platform itself, as a single nomination-and-voting ballot, meaning the same January 8 through February 26 window that took entries was also open for votes rather than handing off to a later stage.

That structure sets this ballot apart from Missouri's other, separately run best-of programs: A-List St. Louis Magazine, Best of KC, Best of Southwest Missouri, Columbia Missourian Reader's Choice Awards, Columbia MO CommunityVotes, and Feast Magazine FEAST 50. None of the six answers to News-Press NOW, none shares its Second Street listing, and doing well on one says nothing about a business's chances on any other.

Why the plain market name isn't enough on its own

"Missouri readers choice" returns results from several unrelated ballots before it returns this one specifically. The direct address, newspressnow.secondstreetapp.com/RC-2026, or its predecessor, newspressnow.secondstreetapp.com/RC-2025, is a more reliable way to land on News-Press NOW's own results than a generic search term. Bookmarking that exact address carries extra weight for a ballot this new, since there isn't yet a decade of familiar branding to fall back on if a search engine surfaces the wrong page first.

Two confirmed years is not yet a settled calendar

A ballot with only two confirmed years, 2025 and 2026, hasn't run long enough to prove whether its opening date holds steady from one year to the next. The 2026 round opened January 8 and closed February 26; nothing published states whether a future round would open on that same date, earlier, or later. A program several editions deep can sometimes be read for a pattern in its own past behavior; this one cannot yet, since a sample of two rounds is too thin to call anything a habit.

Charging either side a fee isn't part of anything confirmed here, not for the business submitting and not for the supporter casting a vote. That matches the ordinary shape of a Second Street readers'-choice program, where neither side hands over money to take part.

Whether the next round lands on January 8 again, arrives sooner, or slips later is a question only News-Press NOW can settle; confirm on the live ballot each cycle before penciling in a date of your own.

Building support without a category list to work from

With no roster of categories to check a business against, the practical move is entering under the exact public name customers already use and letting the live form sort placement from there. A two-edition program simply doesn't have years of former winners for a business to study, so leaning on the window that's actually open beats researching a longer history that isn't there yet.

What tends to move a ballot like this is personal outreach, repeated more than a single time, rather than a mechanical push near a deadline. Whichever way the eventual rules land, capped, uncapped, or never spelled out at all, activity that reads as automated puts the whole entry at risk, a cost this two-year-old program can less afford to absorb than an older one with a longer run behind it could.

A nomination is a claim News-Press NOW alone gets to close out; nothing on the ballot promises more than a spot in the running. Reading is buying votes legal first is worth ten minutes before committing real budget to a program still only two editions into its run. When outside help enters the picture, what that typically covers for a combined nomination-and-voting format is the subject of buying votes online, while award-vote campaign planning was written with exactly this readers'-choice structure in mind.