Student Newspaper Wins Record Number of Journalism Awards

The Knox Student, Knox College's student-run newspaper, recently won 19 journalism awards—including 10 for first place—at the 2016 Illinois College Press Association convention.

TKS advisor Tom Martin said both the overall number of awards and the number of first-place awards represent record highs for The Knox Student in the ICPA contest. The annual competition attracts entries from student newspapers at four-year public and private colleges and universities throughout Illinois.

"This year's finish shows how strong journalism is at Knox. These dedicated students work extremely hard to tell the stories of this campus," Martin said.

"We have a steady core of talented journalists sign up year after year to work on the newspaper and make it better," Martin added. "Assistant Professor of Journalism Jim Dyer has been a big help in promoting journalism at Knox and teaching students reporting and writing. Several stories from his classes earned awards."

This year's co-editors of TKS, Kate Mishkin and Casey Mendoza, said the multi-talented students on staff are responsible for the newspaper's success in the ICPA contest. The awards that TKS won encompassed a wide range of categories, such as headline writing, design, sports, features, in-depth, and photography. (A full list of award-winners is below.)

"To me personally, this shows the hard work we've done this year, as well as the greater diversity of content and multimedia we've produced this year," Mendoza said. "The staff has been more willing to really push the limits of what we can do creatively."

Mishkin added, "We have people who are great at layout and also prioritize enterprise, and people whose wit and critical thinking lends itself to great headlines and in-depth reporting. I think this happens when you have a relatively small staff—you pull from the best of the best on campus, and those people happen to have a lot of various skills and abilities."

Over the years, TKS has established a consistent track record of winning journalism awards at the state level and beyond.

"TKS in general just has a great history regarding strong journalism," Mendoza said. "I think it's because the community in general just has such a strong appreciation for learning about the world, understanding what happens behind the scenes, making the world a better, more transparent place."

Martin said the momentum for TKS' success began more than a decade ago, with journalism faculty members Marilyn Webb and David Amor, along with then-Dean Lawrence Breitborde, "kickstarting the journalism program at Knox." Other key factors, he added, were then-TKS editor Chris Etheridge's 2004 decision to publish the newspaper each week, instead of every other week; and the donation of Borzello Hall as a space for journalism on campus.

"These critical steps moved journalism and the student newspaper forward at Knox," Martin said. "These ICPA awards are the fruits of that groundwork."

The Knox Student was founded in 1878 by S.S. McClure who, after graduating from Knox, created McClure's Magazine, one of the first publications in the field of American investigative journalism.

Here is a list of the awards TKS won in the most recent ICPA contest, which covered the 2015 calendar year: