Southeast's newspaper wins 17 awards

Southeast Missouri State University's Department of Mass Media hosted the 2016 Missouri College Media Association Conference on April 8 and 9, with the Arrow student-run newspaper winning 17 awards, including second in Best Overall Newspaper.

The annual conference brings together school newspaper and yearbook staffs from across the state to learn from others how to better their publications and network with those who have similar interests. More than 150 students and faculty advisers from 22 colleges and universities attended this year.

Jay Forness, MCMA president and the Arrow's editor-in-chief, along with faculty adviser Tamara Zellars Buck began planning the event a year ago. The event was packed with more than 20 workshop sessions and panel discussions, which conference registrants had their choice to attend across a 6 1/2-hour period in the University Center. Arrow staff members, Southeast faculty and alumni and professionals in the industry spoke on topics such as photography, social media, broadcast video and visual promotions.

Kathy Sweeney, an anchor and investigative reporter for KFVS12 with 27 years of experience in the field, served as the keynote speaker, addressing the changing world of journalism in the 21st century.

The Arrow received 15 divisional awards -- three first places, three second places, five third places and four honorable mentions. These awards, which highlight print and online editorial content, are judged in four divisions based on campus enrollment numbers. Southeast is the smallest school in Division I, which spans Lindenwood University, Missouri State University, Saint Louis University, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Missouri-St. Louis, University of Central Missouri and Washington University.

"For our weekly paper to be able to stand head-to-head with those larger programs that have more resources, more faculty, more equipment, but our product is as good, if not better, than those programs' products -- that says a lot about what we do in the basement of Grauel at Southeast in the Department of Mass Media," Karie Hollerbach said.

Buck also recognized many of the awards were a reflection of the department's multimedia journalism option.

"Our curriculum was modified several years ago to focus on multimedia journalism and to encourage our students to stay relevant in their skills so that they could be ready for the modern workplace," Buck said. "Our wins seem to indicate that we're being successful in training them that way."