The award was in the "breaking news (large collegiate newspapers)" category, for our story "Family, friends, mourn loss of Powell children." I wasn't even aware we had won the award until Kaye Nelson, one of my great journalism mentors and formerly a full-time editor for The Universe, congratulated me and my classmates on Facebook.
I will always remember writing this particular story. I had heard the sad news about Josh Powell blowing up his house, killing him and his two young sons, just before I stepped into Advanced Print Reporting, my first class of the day. The following is from a previous blog post I wrote about it:
I first heard the news yesterday morning when I picked up the newspaper. When I arrived at my Advanced Print Reporting class, Professor Campbell announced that we were going to "swarm" the story - meaning we were going to cover this breaking news with an article for the Universe. I volunteered to write, others volunteered to interview different people, and we saw what we could accomplish in an hour. My classmate Rebecca finished writing the story when I had to go to work. She ended up writing most of it.
Sad news; good learning experience.
