USC’s student journalists, newspaper win top honors
The Gamecock swept a record 17 awards, including general excellence, the top overall recognition, at the 2012 SCPA conference held at the association’s headquarters in Columbia Friday. Other college papers represented at the conference included the Winthrop Johnsonian, which took second place in the over-5,000 circulation category and the Clemson Tiger, which took third place.
USC is the only university in South Carolina with a journalism school and The Gamecock is the state’s largest and only daily student newspaper, with a circulation of 12,000.
Former editor-in-chief and fourth-year print journalism student Josh Dawsey was named South Carolina’s 2011 Collegiate Journalist of the Year. Dawsey said The Gamecock had long established a history of being best in the state, but that recognition was “certainly appreciated ... and a tangible tribute to all the work that happened at The Daily Gamecock in 2011.”
Some of the paper’s highlights in 2011, Dawsey pointed out, included its coverage of Columbia and campus news, including the university’s halt on fraternity rush, faculty salary increases and the September flood.
Other staff achievements included three awards for former sports editor James Kratch’s USC football coverage; first- and second-place art and entertainment stories by third-year print journalism students Mary Cathryn Armstrong and Chloe Gould, respectively; first-place single advertisement by fourth-year visual communications student Elizabeth Howell; and first-place website, designed by third-year computer science student Geoffrey Marsi, for the second consecutive year.
“We created a lofty vision of what The Daily Gamecock should be, and that can be credited to a whole host of people who have made up the most talented and hardest-working staff we’ve ever had,” Dawsey said. “For the first time we ranked in the top 20 (the paper was ranked No. 17 in the nation by The Princeton Review), we greatly boosted our Twitter following, we had excellent sports and news coverage, and we wrote strong editorials that made administrators aware of the changes that needed to be made.”
Dawsey especially credited the paper’s success in 2011 to Kratch and former news editor Ryan Quinn. Kratch, a December 2011 English graduate, currently freelances at the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey, and Quinn, a fourth-year print journalism student, will pursue an internship at the New York Times Editing Center in Gainesville, Fla., following graduation in May.
“They are some of the most talented, dogged, excellent journalists I’ve ever worked with, and The Daily Gamecock wouldn’t be anywhere near where it was without their contributions,” Dawsey said.
Current editor-in-chief Colin Campbell echoed Dawsey’s sentiment and said he hopes the paper continues with the strong coverage it’s provided in the past year.
“It’s fantastic to get this kind of recognition,” Campbell said. “It’s difficult to keep the paper at that level when you lose some of those people, but I’ve been incredibly proud of the effort I’ve seen this spring. While it’s a high bar that’s been set, I expect us to live up to it, and I think we have.”