Student Voice places after dailies in college awards
by Helen Clarke
The Student Voice, UW-River Falls’ student newspaper, was recognized for its quality at the Associated Collegiate Press Best of the Midwest College Newspaper Convention March 4-6, 2005.
The Student Voice received the third place Convention Best of Show Four Year Daily/Weekly Broadsheets award. The paper placed behind The Minnesota Daily (University of Minnesota) and The Daily Iowan (University of Iowa). Honorable mentions were given to The Manitou Messenger (Saint Olaf College) and The Grand Valley Lanthorn (Grand Valley State University).
"Our staff chose the Oct. 1, 2004, issue to be judged,” said Micheal Foley, editor when the issue was published and photo editor at the time of the award. “We chose that issue because it had good story topics, good reporting, good photography, good layouts and a terrific top story about the police raid of an infamous party house.”
Staff considered submitting the Oct. 29, 2004 issue with pre-election special coverage, he said, but clearly made the right choice in the end.
"When it was announced at the awards ceremony at the end of the ACP convention, I was overwhelmed,” Foley said.
Overwhelmed, he said, because the category had expanded since 2004 to include daily publications.
When the honorable mentions were given out and the Voice wasn’t named, Foley said he thought “it looked pretty grim.”
“I was very surprised to hear the 'Student Voice' in third place,” he said. “It was even better when they announced first and second place to the two dailies at the convention.”
Foley said that changed his entire view of the competition.
“As I see it, we took first place for weekly broadsheets,” he said. “If the categories were broken down into daily or weekly we would've taken first."
For 2003 and 2004, the Student Voice earned second place in the Four-year weekly broadsheets category. Its 2001 and 2002 issues placed third when the category included dailies.
"[The award] really validated all the work I put into the paper and all the sacrifices I made,” Foley said. “Every lost Wednesday night, every skipped class period and every appointment I put off was worth it.”
He said receiving the award also confirmed that his decision to attend UW-River Falls instead of a bigger school like UW-Madison or the University of Minnesota was the right one.
“If I went to school there, odds are I would never be the newspaper editor as an undergraduate,” Foley said. “I'm very, very glad I had that opportunity."
But it wasn’t just the editor who felt the honor; each one of the paper’s contributors had a hand in its success.
"I was very proud of not only my effort, but the effort of every writer, photography, designer and columnist,” he said. “We each played a part and I'm very proud of the progress the staff made since then."
Many staff members’ excitement about the paper grew just from attending the convention, Foley said. Eric Ebert, the current editor of the Student Voice “got the ball rolling on a lot of brainstorming sessions and even started sketching ideas for the paper's redesign that took place during the summer.”
“Once we received the award, the entire staff caught the same fever,” Foley said. “It was very rewarding for me to see the enthusiasm toward our product passed to another generation of student journalists."
Staff attending the convention were: Derrick Williams, co-editor then, now editor of Thisweek (Prior Lake, Minn.); Eric Quade, co-editor then, now editor of the Barron (Wis.) News-Shield; Eric Ebert, assistant editor then, now editor; A.J. Oscarson, front page editor then, now assistant editor; Sarah Gestson, viewpoints editor then, now front page editor; Sarah Packingham, proofreader then, now sports editor; and Micheal Foley, photo editor then, now copy editor at the Eau Claire (Wis.) Leader-Telegram."
The winning issue of the Student Voice can be accessed online.