The NDSU student newspaper, The Spectrum, received “Best of Show” for a four-year non-weekly newspaper during the Best of the Midwest Convention of the Associated Collegiate Press. The newspaper won a total of five awards during the convention held Feb. 7-9 in Minneapolis.
The Spectrum, led by editor-in-chief Emma Heaton, a senior from Thief River Falls, Minn., also won third place for a special edition.
Among the individual winners, graphics designer Whitney Stramer, a sophomore from Maple Grove, Minn., received second place for a singe-page design; opinion editor Caleb Werness, a sophomore from Anoka, Minn., placed second for an editorial/commentary piece; and head news editor Lisa Marchand, a junior from Fargo, received third place for a news story.
"We are all really proud. We've worked really hard this past year so we were extremely excited to hear that we won,” Marchand said. “We got to network with some really talented people, and we came back from the conference energized and ready to make the paper even better."
The convention is for collegiate news journalists and advisers who work with print and online media. During the conference, Associated Collegiate Press prepares about 30 practical learning sessions and discussion groups, in addition to the Best of Show contest for general excellence, individual contests and critiques of student news media.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.