Two of the University of North Georgia’s three student newspapers, representing the Gainesville campus and the Oconee campus, won several awards in this year's Georgia College Press Association Better Newspapers Contest.
The Gainesville campus student newspaper, the Compass, won third overall in the two-year category and the staff of the Oconee campus’ paper, The Voice, brought home 15 individual awards. This year’s results added to the impressive 164 awards the two papers have collected at the contest since 2008.
The newspaper staffs, consisting of 25 UNG students and journalism professors Dr. Merrill Morris and Dan Cabaniss, received the awards at the two-day Press Institute Feb. 1-2 in Athens.
Both papers had winners in almost every category of the awards. The individual awards given to the Compass staff were:
- Best Column—Michelle Wiggle, third place
- Best Photograph—Editorial/Feature, second place
- Best Photo Essay—second place
- Best Sports Story —Alex Forrest, second place
- Best Entertainment Feature—Matt Wentworth, first place
- Best Feature Story—Audrey Williams, first place
- Improvement—third place
- General Photography—second place
- General Advertising—second place
- Best Campus Community Service—Editorial, third place
- Best Campus Community Service—News, first place
- General Excellence—third place
The Voice’s awards were:
- Best Column—Robbie Robertson, first place
- Best Photograph-Editorial/Feature—Josh Jones, third place
- Best Photograph-Sports—Brett Fowler, first place
- Best Sports Story—Tyler DeLoach, first place
- Best Entertainment Feature—second and third place
- Best Entertainment Story—Amenda Sali, first place; Michelle Corell, second place; Margaret Packer, third place
- Best Feature Story—Amenda Sali, second place
- Best News Article-Objective—Lauren Pratt, second place; Chris Raimondi, third place
- Best News Article-Investigative—Matt Davenport, second place; Chris Raimondi, third place
- Improvement—second place
- Layout and Design—third place
- Best Campus Community Service-Feature—first place
- Best Campus Community Service-Sports—third place
More than 200 students, faculty advisors, and professional journalists attend this yearly event which offers student journalists opportunities to have their work critiqued by professionals and attend panels on topics such as communications law, sports writing, community journalism, investigative reporting, writing, newspaper layout and design, and multimedia
