By ALLI SCHIEBER
Editor-in-Chief
Three members of the Northwestern News staff visited Oklahoma State University April 9 for the annual Oklahoma Collegiate Media Association conference.
At the conference the staff members were able to attend two workshops, listen to a keynote speaker and won awards from OCMA. This included five first place awards and one third place award. The contest was late in being organized so only first place was awarded in most categories. The Best Website category had three places.
The individual awards included Victor Kinzie for a feature photo, Allison Schieber for section design, Karolina Jurseuite for sports photo, Ken Irving for a sport – feature/personality profile of Coach Ronnie Jones. Two awards were as a staff which included first place in multimedia reporting for a project done by Tara Owen, Ely Noble and Alli Schieber about the changing face of sports. The staff also took third place for overall website design.
Dr. Kaylene Armstrong, who is the adviser to the Northwestern News, said she is proud of the work the student editors and writers do.
“Most people on campus have no idea of the dedication of these students,” she said. “When necessary, they work into the wee hours of the morning on production day to have the paper out for Thursday morning. These awards honor that work.”
The staff attended two workshops. One was with Joe Mussatto a sports columnist for the Oklahoman. He talked about how to dig deeper when telling a story. Mussatto also talked about how to find a good story because while sometimes stories fall in your lap most of the time reporters have to find them their selves.
The other workshop the staff attended was with Ryan Welton the CEO and founder of Doable Digital Media. Welton discussed the difference between presenting for news versus digital media. Digital media is something anyone can do so it is more about doing it better than anyone else.
The conference was held in conjunction with the 36th Annual Paul Miller Lecture Series. This featured OSU graduate Ryan McNeill who is the London-based deputy editor for the Reuters Global data team. He showed how his team used satellite images to document the growing number of gravesites in Sudan to show the results of the serious famine there after the civil war there in 2023.