Newhouse students made a stellar showing in this year’s Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Mark of Excellence awards competition.
The student immersive media project “Visualizing 81” earned the MOEy Award, which is given to the top entry among all national Mark of Excellence award winners. There were more than 3,000 entries this year, according to SPJ Foundation President Irwin Gratz. “[The students’] work on the impact highway planning has on communities of color inspired the judges to comment that this was a strong story, and the telling included fantastic use of interactive components, archival material and other multiplatform elements—even mini-podcasting and 360 technology,” Gratz said.
Newhouse students also took home two national wins, and five others were finalists.
NATIONAL WINNERS:
Breaking News Photography
TJ Shaw, “Racial Reckoning” (Deconstructing the Divide)
Immersion Journalism
Staff, “Visualizing 81”
NATIONAL FINALISTS:
Independent Online Student Publication
Staff, “Upstate Unearthed”
Use of Multimedia
Staff, “Visualizing 81”
Broadcast/Online Sports Videography
Annie Boos, “The Comeback Year” (Sports Media Center/The NewsHouse)
General News Photography (Large)
Gavin Liddell, “Candlelight vigil” (The NewsHouse)
Radio News Reporting
Sydney Gold, “Our Poisoned Kids” (Deconstructing the Divide/WAER)
“This contest truly places our student work among the best in college journalism from this past year as the awards are narrowed down from thousands of entries to 12 regional winners who then compete for winner and one or two runners-up in each category,” says Jon Glass, professor of practice of magazine, news and digital journalism and executive producer of The NewsHouse.
Honorees will be recognized this October at the MediaFest22 conference in Washington, D.C.