So, several weeks ago, my journalism capstone course professor from the University of Arizona called me to let me know that the website I was co-editor-in-chief of during my last semester at UA was a finalist for the 2007 Online Journalism Awards presented by the Online News Association and the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California.
The nomination was extremely exciting, but no way in hell did I expect us to win. I mean, I was always proud of our publication - proud of all the work we put into establishing it last semester, running it and producing it ... proud of the idea of it... but never did I actually expect us to win... especially once I took a glance at some of our competition.
But.... we did!
Really early this morning, before I had even begun to pack for our trip to Cleveland, I found an email waiting for me in my inbox from the same professor:
Hi guys,
I'm happy to inform you that you are all responsible (according to the Online News Association) for producing the best student online publication in the country. Hell, in the English speaking world. People from anywhere in the world could enter and did.
The Online News Association awards dinner was just held in Toronto. John Boulton, AzStarnet's managing editor and Rob's boss called me from Toronto where he accepted the winning award on our behalf. Actually we shared the award with "Our Tahoe," an environmentally oriented publication put out by graduate students in the Lake Tahoe area. John will deliver the trophy to our class, hopefully on Wednesday.
Congratulations to all of you! What you did last semester was truly extraordinary and it's nice that outside judges recognized that.
I hope you can find room on your resumes to add the line.
You guys are the best!
Jay
Amanda (the other editor-in-chief) and the rest of the staff put in sooo much work last semester. I know I honestly felt like all I ever did was throw energy into that publication. Even though I shouldn't have, I definitely put it ahead of every other class - so it was nice to see that all of that work paid off.
Although, for me, the work was paid off long before this award was even mentioned... because I was always ridiculously proud of what we were able to do in such a short amount of time, with such a small staff (last semester we had less than 10 students running it - myself included.)
To know at the end of a semester that we not only created a really cool site that focused solely on U.S.-Mexico border issues, but the foundation for a class which will be used as a capstone course for every other journalism class to follow, was insanely fulfilling.
Dorky or not, that site was (at times) my (VERY) unwanted child.
But at the end of every day, I knew it was worth the energy.
Award... or no award.
1 comment:
Yay for Border Beat! Even though Catscan is far superior, hahaha. ;)
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