The Knox Student Wins 19 Awards from the Illinois College Press Association

by Tricia Duke '19

The Knox Student, the student-run newspaper on the Knox campus, won 19 awards from the Illinois College Press Association (ICPA) this year, including first place in General Excellence for the second year in a row.

The Knox Student is not new to ICPA success, having won more than a dozen ICPA awards in multiple years for the last decade.

Jonathan Schrag '19, current co-editor-in-chief and last year's sports editor, said that the articles recognized by ICPA awards represented the newspaper's philosophy of reporting at its best.

"It's [about] in-depth reporting that goes beyond just coverage," Schrag said, "Going out of our way to find big stories that people want to read about, that people need to read about."

Sophomore Connor Wood's news story about the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rican student Elena Angueira-Bosch came in first place in the news story category. He said that the emotional connection that the story made with readers was a big contributor to the story's success.

"I am, overall, extremely honored and proud," Wood said. "I see that story as probably the most important one I have written because it was a heartbreaking situation that had an impact on a Knox student."

Not only was the staff proud of the individual articles recognized, but the staff took perhaps even more pride in their first place award in the General Excellence category. "TKS has a reputation at ICPA for being one of the most polished papers and in our division of small news publications we were told that we are the ‘golden standard,'" said TKS co-editor-in-chief Lillie Chamberlain.

"The big award is General Excellence," said Tom Martin, editor of The Register-Mail, Galesburg's daily newspaper, and faculty advisor to TKS. He described the ICPA awards ceremony as the judges led up to the announcement of General Excellence. "It's the last one that they announce. You don't want to hear your name, because they do honorable mention first, and then third place, and then second. When they reach second, you know that you either got shut out or you won the big award. Everybody's holding their breath."

Then, according to Martin, the TKS staff got excited.

Schrag and Chamberlain agreed that the General Excellence award signifies that TKS not only has good reporters; The Knox Student has a solid team.

"I think a huge part of what we do well is that we're a diverse group of students and that helps us know what's going on around campus," Schrag said. He said that most newspaper staffs he has observed at conferences are composed mostly of journalism majors, but that the staff of TKS represents much more of the student body.

"I think it shows our dedication to those values of a liberal arts education," Schrag said.

Martin emphasized the importance of the editorial team's high standards.

"They've developed a culture over the years that they want their newspaper to be quality," said Martin. "The bar is high, and they like it that way."

The articles and their places for the ICPA awards are listed below.