State and regional newspaper winners
And the award goes too…
Writers and editors from The Utah Statesman may not have heard these exact words, but awards and recognition did come for work submitted from the 2014-15 school year.
The Statesman won eight different awards or were finalists from the regional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for sports photography, editorial cartooning, news reporting, in-depth reporting and columns. The paper also won second place for Best Breaking News Story and Best Sports Page, as well as third place for Best Sports Story in their group for the Utah Press Awards.
“The students have really taken it upon themselves to elevate the caliber of content they’re putting out,” Tim Olsen, student media advisor, said. “Obviously they’ve fared well in the state and regional awards, and I think that speaks to the talent and the drive that the student media members have here at Utah State.”
It was mostly the students’ work and diligence in covering the news, writing stories, taking photos and editing that led to the awards and recognition, and that’s the way the advisors like it, Olsen said.
“Certainly we want to help put them in a place to succeed and reach whatever goals they may have, whether that be through individual training or workshops,” Olsen said. “We’ve brought in professionals and taken some of the students to conferences to help give them more training and more motivation. But at the end of the day I would say the majority of reaching those goals is really up to them.”
Last year’s managing editor Mariah Noble started the year with goals in mind, knowing that the Statesman staff had the ability to gain recognition.
“I really wanted to build the rapport of the paper. I wanted to build the confidence of the people who worked there,” Noble said. “I felt that we could do a better job than the past and present ourselves with an even higher caliber of professionalism … I wanted to make people feel more confident about what they were doing there and realize what they were doing really does help them prepare for their future careers in journalism.”
Noble was surprised to see what they ended up winning in, especially the work she had personally submitted for to SPJ.
Noble had set goals for awards that could be won by the Statesman staff, and was diligent in reminding the editors and writers what they could do, said Kylee Larsen, one of this year’s managing editors.
Larsen was a winner, as well as a finalist, in the sports photography category, as photo editor of the paper last year.
“I really focused on sports photography so I was glad those were the awards I was able to win,” Larsen said. “Throughout the summer I went to all the football practices and was at all of the scrimmages, so I spent a lot of time really familiarizing myself with what was going on, so it was easier for me to know what was coming in the games so I could take better photos and get more used to it.”
In regards to this year, Larsen and her other co-managing editor Jeffrey Dahdah are encouraging all of the staff to put out quality material and have made some changes to the design and website. These changes and goals are what they believe will bring in awards and help them continue to improve in all areas, Larsen said.
“One thing we talked about was winning an overall award for the newspaper, not just one issue we did good on, but overall we were able to win best overall newspaper or something like that,” Larsen said.
Publishing new stories online every day is one of the biggest goals editors have for the new school year, Larsen said. Relating more to the student audience of the Statesman is what the editors want, and they see that coming from more emphasis on the website and sharing on social media, she said.
The Statesman won many awards on the state and regional level and are still waiting to hear back about some national awards, Olsen said.
Utah is in Region 9, which also includes Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. In this region, the Statesman won or were finalists for the following SPJ awards:
Editorial Cartooning: Finalist — Cole Benson (Cole Benson Cartoons)
Sports Photography: Winner — Kylee Larsen (Joe Hill runs the ball against UNLV)
Sports Photography: Finalist — Kylee Larsen (Pitcher Noelle Johnson celebrates)
General Column Writing: Winner — Mariah Noble
General Column Writing: Finalist — Logan Jones
General News Reporting: Finalist — Mariah Noble, Jeff Dahdah, Manda Perkins (USU administrator terminated after accusations of sexual assault)
In-depth Reporting: Finalist — Eric Jungblut (Summer sales, big risk big reward)
Sports Column Writing: Winner — Brad Ferguson
Aggie Television and Aggie Radio also won some SPJ awards that can be seen here, along with all of the Region 9 awards: www.spj.org/news.asp
For more information on the Statesman or to read the paper’s stories, visit usustatesman.com.
— mandy.m.morgan@aggiemail.usu.edu