By Nick Perkins
Student Reporter
The Northwestern campus newspaper attended the Oklahoma Collegiate Media Awards on April 5 in Stillwater where they won 16 awards.
This event is sponsored by the Oklahoma Collegiate Media Association. This is an event for different colleges in Oklahoma to submit entries from students and student newspapers. The OCMA bring in judges from out of state to judge the various entries from 2018.
The editors from the newspaper went through old newspapers from 2018 to pick out what they thought would be best for the competition and what would represent the newspaper best. “This past year we’ve all had to step up and learn a lot about designing and writing to make our paper what it is,” Ashley Strehl, editor in chief, said.
The Northwestern News is in the diamond division, which consists of smaller schools. The schools that were also in this division were: East Central University, Northeastern Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Baptist University, Oklahoma Panhandle State University, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Southern Nazarene University and Southwestern Oklahoma State University.
Out of the 16 awards that the Northwestern News won, they swept the board in one category. This was the team enterprise/ investigative reporting category. In this they won first, second and third place. “I’m extremely proud of everyone and how our creativity skills have developed over the year,” said Strehl.
In addition to the awards ceremony, the students attended the Paul Miller Journalism Lecture, the speaker at this was Brett McMurphy. “He used to work for ESPN,” Dr. Kaylene Armstrong, assistant professor of mass communication, said. “Many people know him as the guy that broke the Urban Myer story on Facebook.”
They also attended some sessions to help improve their writing and photography skills.
“Many people on campus probably don’t realize how much work these kids put into putting out the paper every week,” Armstrong said. “We’re one of the few groups of people on campus that put their work out there for everyone to criticize, comment on and enjoy.”