Students’ work honored in College Coronavirus Coverage Award competition
Shrishti Mathew, a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism (MNO) at the Newhouse School, is one of the winners in this week’s College Coronavirus Coverage Award competition.
Photo by Emily Kenny
Mathew’s winning piece, “Fleeing in fear, landing in chaos,” details her flight home from Syracuse to Chennai, India last month.
“Had things gone as planned, I would have been boarding a plane to Los Angeles for spring break, a trip I had painstakingly planned and saved for. Instead, I was fleeing from a pandemic that ravaged lives like a tornado,” Mathew writes.
Matthew wrote the piece for Professor Jim Shahin’s Critical Writing course. MNO student Stephanie Macrinos provided the illustration for the story.
“Wow, the language was so beautiful, I felt every emotion,” said one judge about Mathew’s winning entry. “The graphic was great–so jarring and fitting with the story.”
The weekly contest for student journalists is sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Collegiate Press, the Society for News Design, College Broadcasters Inc. and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. It recognizes college students who are covering the pandemic even as they juggle remote learning and other issues.