Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Women in the Outdoors: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Women in the Outdoors ballot is and who runs it

The 2025 Women in the Outdoors ballot is a public-vote recognition program run by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Milwaukee newspaper whose main site sits at jsonline.com. The fuller organizer name attached to the project is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sports Show, and the show's own page for the initiative at jssportsshow.com/womenoutdoors/ frames it plainly: "The Milwaukee Sports Show is proud to host women-focused initiatives that empower, connect, and engage outdoor enthusiasts." The market label behind the program reads Milwaukee, WI, placing it in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Balloting ran on Second Street, the platform behind the newspaper's contest hub at jsonline.gannettcontests.com, and the ballot itself lived at https://jsonline.gannettcontests.com/2025-Women-in-the-Outdoors. The promotion is typed UGCVoting/UGCVotingPhoto, which marks it as a user-generated vote in which the entries themselves carry photographs. In subject matter this is recognition work rather than a business ranking: where a city poll scores restaurants or contractors, this ballot honors women and their stories from the outdoors world, with an individual photograph as the thing supporters vote on. Nothing anywhere on the ballot asks a supporter to pay; casting a vote is a public act open to whatever audience the form admits.

Item	Detail
Program	2025 Women in the Outdoors
Organizer	Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (fuller name: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sports Show)
Host platform	Second Street
Ballot address	https://jsonline.gannettcontests.com/2025-Women-in-the-Outdoors
City	Milwaukee
State	Wisconsin
Format	UGCVoting/UGCVotingPhoto, a public vote over submitted photographs
Subject family	best-of recognition, outdoors vertical

When the 2025 window ran and what the organizer left unpublished

Just one edition of this program is documented. Voting opened on November 14, 2025 and closed on January 11, 2026, and the ballot now stands closed. No later edition year has been announced, and nothing published commits the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to another round. Several details never appeared in print alongside the ballot either. There is no published category roster, no published per-supporter voting frequency, no published eligibility requirements, and no published tie-break procedure. Anyone planning an entry strategy, a reminder schedule or an outreach push around this ballot needs to work from whatever the live form displays when a window is actually open, because those governing details sat with the organizer rather than in any publicly circulating summary.

Stage	Date	Notes
Voting opened	November 14, 2025	Start of the confirmed window
Voting closed	January 11, 2026	End of the confirmed window
Status now	Closed	No open window on this address
Next window	Not announced	Watch the newspaper's contest pages

How a supporter casts a vote on this ballot

Casting a vote meant visiting the Second Street ballot at jsonline.gannettcontests.com and working through the photo entries it displayed. The UGCVotingPhoto format puts pictures at the center of the page: each entry shows its photograph beside whatever identifying text its creator supplied, and a supporter picks an entry and submits a vote for it. Nothing about the act of voting involves payment; it is a public vote in the plainest sense, with the ballot's own on-page instructions governing everything else about frequency and eligibility. With the 2025 window closed since January 11, 2026, a supporter cannot cast a new vote on this address until the organizer posts another ballot, so the practical move today is preparation: knowing which entry deserves support, lining up the people who would back it, and being ready the moment a fresh window appears. General guidance on earning support across public online votes, including the outreach habits that transfer well between ballots of this kind, is collected in the guide to getting more votes online. The takeaway for this specific program is simple: the photograph does the persuading, and everything a supporter adds is distribution, putting the ballot link in front of people who care about Wisconsin outdoors life.

Where this ballot sits among Wisconsin reader votes

Wisconsin carries several large reader-choice ballots, and this one differs from every neighbour in the set. Best of the Valley covers Appleton, Best of Madison serves Madison, Best of Milwaukee Readers' Choice ranks businesses across the Milwaukee metro, the Eau Claire Reader's Choice Awards serve Eau Claire, Best of the Bay covers Green Bay, and Janesville CommunityVotes runs in Janesville. Those programs share a shape: long lists of local business and service categories, one broad voting season, and results that function as community endorsements for the winners. The Women in the Outdoors ballot is narrower by design. It comes from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's contests operation rather than a standalone local brand, its subject is the outdoors life of Wisconsin women, and its photo-entry format makes individual images the unit being voted on rather than a business name buried in a long category list. A reader who follows several of these ballots notices the difference immediately: the city polls reward familiar storefronts, while this one rewards a picture and the story behind it. That contrast also changes campaign advice, because mobilizing support for a photograph of a hunt, a catch or a trail ride calls for a different circle of backers than a favorite diner does. The same Second Street host also carries other promotions from the newspaper's hub that are not votes at all, among them the WeatherPro Exteriors $55K Home Exterior sweepstakes and the Get Kalahari'd Away Fall 2026 email giveaways, which are drawings and entry forms rather than public tallies. Routes for each neighbouring Wisconsin ballot are listed at the foot of this page.

Building support for an entry on this photo ballot

Support for an entry here grows the way it does on any public photo vote: through people who see the image, respond to it and take the step of voting. Practical levers include asking outdoor clubs, hunting and fishing networks, church groups and coworkers to view the entry directly, posting the ballot link where those communities already gather, and timing reminders early in a window while attention is still fresh rather than in the closing days when every entry is shouting at once. Because the confirmed window stretched from mid-November into January, outreach inside any future round would land across the holiday stretch, when Wisconsin outdoors communities are active online and a hunting or fishing photograph travels readily through club forums and group chats. The organizer's position on coordinated outside help has not been published, so the ballot's own terms are the final word for anyone weighing assistance beyond organic outreach. For background before making any decision, how paid vote services work lays out the mechanics in general terms, and where purchased votes stand legally covers the questions worth asking. Whichever path a supporter takes, the arithmetic of a public vote stays the same: the entry with the most accepted votes finishes ahead, and every accepted vote has to arrive inside the confirmed window.